It's true that, in Iran, women have half of the rights men do. And yet 66 per cent of students are women.

Business is very personal. For me, everything is extremely personal. With actors, the fact that I write helps, because when you say to an actor "Oh I want you to do it a little bit more ...," without saying what you want more of, then the actor doesn't know what to do. But if you can put into words exactly what you want, then the experience of writing is helpful with that.

I loved Chiara Mastroianni voice, her talent, her generosity. We rehearsed for two months...She's a workaholic and perfectionist, like Vincent [Paronnaud] and myself.

Revolutions just spread blood. Evolution - this is something that changes in the long term.

I try to look at life carefully and reproduce life the way life is. It's a question of looking carefully at how it is. In life, you don't have total happiness. People always say that. But you don't have total sadness either, no matter what situation you are living in.

The things that I do today are the things I did as a child. When I was a child, either I was drawing or I was taking all the kids off my street and I wanted to make shows - I was all the time making! The only thing is, now I know how to do it better, and now they give me money for it.

In all the dictatorships, there's such a non-understanding of what human beings are. I mean, if you believe in the Bible, you have the story of Adam and Eve and God tells them, "Do whatever you want. The only thing you shouldn't do is eat the apple." What do they do the first thing? They eat the apple. So if you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.