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

Each person makes their own choice, but my spirit is meant to stay in Iran, especially with the work that I do, and with the emotional connection I have with the country - with all its difficulties, this is why I stay.

The fact that I do place music at the end of my films is not to accentuate the emotion. It serves an opposite purpose which is to remove them from the emotional space and allow them to enter a space of thinking, because I believe that when the audience is watching the film they're watching it with their feelings.

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.

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

One must never tell a child what it is they should display acting.

I like storytelling movies and more than that I like historical movies; and I think someday I'll definitely make a movie about the past 50 years history.