How a 19-Year-Old Refugee in Indonesia Became an Animator on Pharrell’s New Movie

When Amir Mahdi Qurbani was younger, his mother would buy stories from him. She never paid much. As the only teacher of an informal school for five or six children in their home in Tehran, she didn’t have much. Qurbani’s favorite story followed the escapades of a space cowboy, who could fly anywhere in the universe and go on adventures in vast uncharted galaxies. “He could explore the cosmos, be free, and everything like that,” says Qurbani, 19, by video call from Jakarta, where he now lives in two rooms with his parents and two siblings, in housing provided by a refugee agency. 

He does not remember much about how they got to Indonesia almost a decade ago. “I just remember that it was all worriedness and not being sure where we were going and a lot of darkness,” he says. He’s not even sure of where his parents were heading (although history and geography suggest it was Australia). “My parents always said that, ‘We want to find a place for you so you can have a brighter future, so you can actually belong there and call that place your home.’” He also remembers that although they had to leave extended family and most of their possessions behind, he took his small collection of Lego pieces with him. “They were just my favorite toys, and I told a lot of stories with them.”

Until recently, the family has lived mostly on money from international refugee organizations, which Qurbani says amounts to about 600 Australian dollars ($400) a month. They cannot work for an Indonesian employer and they cannot go to school, so Qurbani’s formal education essentially ceased when he was 9. Their parents bought one ASUS laptop, and Qurbani and his brother and sister attempted to continue their education, learning English and picking up animation skills on that. 

But now the young Qurbani’s flights of imagination—and his love of Lego—have attracted a more affluent benefactor than his mother: Hollywood. Qurbani is one of dozens of animators whose work appears in Piece by Piece, the new biopic of singer-producer-designer Pharrell Williams that is entirely told with animated Lego pieces. The movie traces Pharrell’s childhood growing up in Virginia Beach, how music gave him an avenue out of the projects when he didn’t fit in at school, and how his difficulties—including his unusual thought processes—became the road to his success. 

Qurbani designed more than 400 characters in the film, mostly in crowd scenes, and animated the Lego version of the pixelated camouflage Louis Vuitton ensemble (an actual Pharrell outfit) that the star wears in the poster. And, wouldn’t you know it, Qurbani is also a Pharrell fan. “His songs are the most calm and soothing, and they just give me inspiration for all my works,” he says. “Two of my favorite things, Lego and Pharrell, came together. I didn't think that something like this could happen.”

Hollywood and Qurbani found each other through Tongal, a platform for filmmakers that connects people who need video with up-and-coming artists who have skills but may not have contacts in the industry. When the company, which Qurbani first found via Lego-related pages on social media years ago, announced in 2022 that it was looking for character animators for a Lego project, Qurbani eagerly pitched his ideas, his portfolio, and some 3D digital models. Within days he got a call offering him a gig and swearing him to secrecy, although he was allowed to tell his family. “I can't explain how excited we were to hear such a thing,” he says. Via Tongal, he had already done some work for WarnerMedia, but Piece by Piece is his first theatrical release—and the first theatrical film ever produced in collaboration with a creator platform.

Qurbani says he has been inspired by Pharrell’s dedication to overcoming his setbacks. As multigenerational refugees, the Qurbanis have faced many. Amir's grandfather, a Hazara, was driven out of Afghanistan into Iran as rights for Shia Muslims diminished. His parents and siblings were all born in Iran, but not recognized as citizens, and not given a pathway to attain it or work authorization. His mother taught refugee children at her little home school and his father worked as a self-taught electrician until they saved enough to pay smugglers to help them leave. Like so many refugees, they got as far as Indonesia, but could get no further. With no money and no offer of asylum from another country, they've been stuck in Jakarta.

Qurbani spends his mornings (after a quick jog in a nearby park) trying to further his education as best he can, his afternoons trying to do whatever work is needed, and then after dinner he and his family crowd around a small TV to watch the movies and cartoons. “If we can save enough money, we would buy a [bigger] TV,” he says. For now, any extra cash Qurbani has made has been spent on the most powerful computer he can afford, a MacBook Air, on which he builds all his animations.

For the Pharrell project, he was given a series of characters from different eras to design. “I was assigned to, for example, find an outfit for a 1960s Florida beach party,” he says. “And then I was assigned to build 10 characters for the scene. It was a little bit hard to source references online for a person like me, but I tried my best and then created my own characters.” He first drew them on a sketchpad, then drew them again on the computer as a 3D version. Some of his characters were also used for a build-your-own-character promo game for the movie. 

It has been hard, Qurbani admits, not to give into despair. “There are a lot of times when we do lose hope, since we are in a limbo,” he says, growing emotional. “We're stuck here and we don't have a way to go anywhere else. You do not have the right to live as a normal human being, so you do feel hopeless most of the time.”

But for now at least, just as music offered a path for Pharrell when his education wasn't going very well, animation has been a way for Qurbani to fulfill at least one dream: creating something the world can see. Wiping his eyes, he recovers his optimistic posture. “My parents do say that at some point you are going to go somewhere,” he says. “You are going to go somewhere. You will find a place where you can actually call home and be citizens there.” And now finally, he has a hint of something more. “I am now hopeful that my skills and creativity can help me build a better life for me and my family,” he says. He may not be a space cowboy yet, but he has made it to the launchpad.