I feel it’s important to talk about the complex issues affecting us. And these are complex issues. I think it’s insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.

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

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.

There is no privilege in restriction. In other words, I disagree with people who say restriction makes you more creative. I think that's a misleading slogan. I might have been more creative without them than with them.

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

Working with children is very different than the way in which I work with adults. I never tell the children the actual truth of the thing that I want them to act. Although children are really into play and play acting, and this is a major part of their existence, they never actually find the playing or acting of adults credible.

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.