We always have the movies that are more toward real life, but they don't have that much drama or suspense, or we have the full of drama or suspense, but they're far away from real life. Always when I was watching a film, films with good drama, I was thinking, "I wish they were more close to real life." But when I was watching real life films I was thinking, "Well I wish it had more drama." I've tried, in the movies that I worked so far, to get these two things closer and closer to each other.

It's not some big event that creates the drama, it's the little things of everyday life that bring about that drama.

The first theme that every audience can get easily everywhere in the world is the theme of judgment. You are constantly judging if this character is doing something wrong or right, or the other character is doing something right or wrong.

The fact is I'm not making a film in order to draw pictures or make images about Iran.

Because I write the screenplay entirely and precisely, there is the danger that an actor might feel that this finite role is being imposed on them. I want the actors to feel that this is their own role, and that they can go back to point zero and develop this character.

Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

The bigger confrontation is the one an individual has with itself.