Unfortunately, Cinema Critics Are Very Few In

This Kind Of Directing, I Think, Is Very Similar To Being A Football Coach. You Prepare Your Players And Place Them In The Right Places, But Once The Game Is On, There's Nothing Much You Can Do - You Can Smoke A Cigarette Or Get Nervous, But You Can't Do Much.

Good Cinema Is What We Can Believe And Bad Cinema Is What We Can't Believe. What You See And Believe In Is Very Much What I'm Interested In.

I Prefer The Films That Put Their Audience To Sleep In The Theater. Some Films Have Made Me Doze Off In The Theater, But The Same Films Have Made Me Stay Up At Night, Wake Up Thinking About Them In The Morning, And Keep On Thinking About Them For Weeks.

I'm Not Sure That My Films Show The Reality Of Life In Iran; We Show Different Aspects Of Life. Iran Is A Very Extensive And Expansive Place, And Sometimes, Even For Us Who Live There, Some Of The Realities Are Very Hard To Comprehend.

When I Met Akira Kurosawa In Japan, One Question He Asked Me Was, "how Did You Actually Make The Children Act The Way They Do? I Do Have Children In My Films But I Find That I Reduce And Reduce Their Presence Until I Have To Get Rid Of Them Because There's No Way That I Can Direct Them." My Own Thought Is That One Is Very Grand, Like An Emperor On A Horse, And It's Very Hard For A Child To Relate To That. In Order To Be Able To Cooperate With A Child, You Have To Come Down To Below Their Level In Order To Communicate With Them.