I did not have a script [of Close Up]. I made notes in the evenings and we filmed during the day over 40 days.I didn't sleep a wink for those 40 nights. I have a picture from the end of the shoot, and in it I have lost all my hair.

I never intended to write poems, nor to be a photographer, nor to be a film-maker. I just took many, many pictures and I would put them in an album, and then some years later I decided to show them and suddenly I was called a photographer. Same thing with my poetry. They're notes that I'd written in a book and it may be considered poetry.

The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.

I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame.

It's not so much a question of whether we've shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.

If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that's very much what I'd prefer to do.

I thought that I had been asked every kind of question possible.