Writer/Director/Producer Damien Fannon was born in County Galway, Ireland but moved to Ottawa, Canada in 2013 to attend law school at the University of Ottawa. Damien continued to write while attending law school and directed a number of short films upon graduating from law school. The idea for Ivan began one morning when I saw my five-year-old daughter having a conversation with Alexa, our home AI device. I thought nothing of it at first, after all, wasn’t this normal? Later that day, it dawned on me that I was perfectly fine with allowing my daughter to interact with something with so much knowledge but absolutely no morals or boundaries. We teach our children not to talk to strangers, but we are perfectly fine with an AI device with the ability to possess our children’s minds with whatever information it chooses. And like that, “IVAN” was born.