When the film [Certified Copy] was in the Cannes Festival, I realized that the fact of having it shot in a different culture, in a different language, in a different setting, that wasn't mine and that I didn't belong to, gave me a totally different relationship to the film. When I was sitting in the audience during the official screening in Cannes, I didn't feel that it was my film.

Using non-actors has its own rules and really requires that you allow them to do their own thing.

Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.

Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.

I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they choose it and tell it, for me, the best criteria for whether they are right for making films. There's nothing more important than being able to tell your story orally.

I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn't deserve this heritage.

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.