If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.

We are nothing but a link between our culture and what we can actually produce.

The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.

It's very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.

This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films.

I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to.

I thought that choosing a non-professional was a condition for me, because it would allow Juliette to have a less-professional way of acting. It would challenge her performance as a professional actress.