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

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

There are those who simply want to live their lives, and feel they cannot live the way they want to in Iran. Others are ideologically motivated: They will stay no matter what and try to change things.

I always feel that a viewer has an expectation about every moment of the film and where it's going, so if I act against that, I've created a twist. In fact it becomes a kind of game with the expectations of the viewer. This is the superficial appearance. In the layer beneath there is a hidden theme. The result of each twist is that the judgment of the audience member is challenged.

I would have had the same narrative, regardless of the atmosphere and the restrictions.

I always thought that in the countries that the modernity kicks in later, it seems that everything changes on the surface, the physical things change, but inside, things haven't changed, really. This is always the challenge of this kind of community, to make a harmony between the cultural traditions and the modernity of modern life.

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