There's An 800 Kilometer Border Between Iran

Because There Is So Little Room For Expression Otherwise, A Lot Of People Love Cinema Because They Find It A Way Of Expressing Themselves.

It Was Really Bizarre, That Sabzian Business. You Know I Had No Interest In Being Photographed Before This Incident. But Then Not Just Sabzian—many Other People Started Pretending They Were Me! One Of Them Actually Got Married While Pretending He Was Me! My Face Became Publicly Recognizable Soon After I Decided To Have A Few Photographs Of Me Available In Public To Prevent These Sorts Of Identity Thefts. It Is Really Pathetic, If You Think Of It. Filmmakers And Filmmaking Is So Popular In Iran Because All Other Forms Of Expression Have Been Denied To People.

From My Films, You Can At Least Learn About Iran, You Can Get A Sense Of The History And The Society. But No Such Films Have Been Made About Afghanistan, So You Really Can't Know Much About It.

Usually People Like To Categorise Artists. With My Films, I Categorise People: If I Know Which One Of My Movies You Like, I Can Tell Which Kind Of A Person You Are.

If I Make Two Films In A Year, They'll Be Different. This Is My Style - I Can't Have Just One Way.