I think I really produce my best work in Iran.

While shooting Ten I was sitting in the backseat, but I didn't interfere. Sometimes, I was following in another car, so I was not even present on the "set", because I thought they would work better in my absence.

When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life.

I often say to my students in workshops that if they are trying to find literary inspiration, they should not go and read novels, because novels are more appropriate for series. Where as they should read short stories - that's the right format for you to be able to actually display the narrative in a film.

When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.

Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.

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.