One of the biggest blessings in my life is that I have a very wonderful family, a lovely wife and two lovely daughters.

It was important to me to make a film where I don't show the past but where the spectators can see the past.

Whenever I write a part, I think there's this person somewhere in the world that this part is specifically for and all I have to do is go searching to find that particular individual.

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.

I gained a great deal from the period during which I worked in theater and I value those things a great deal.

In my opinion when you speak about relationships between people, you are actually talking about everything in their world because everything is contained in that relationship.

Iranian filmmakers are not passive. They fight whenever they can, as creative expression means a lot to them. The restrictions and censorship in Iran are a bit like the British weather: one day it's sunny, the next day it's raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine.