From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.

Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.

I'm not playing myself. It's a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn't have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.

There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.

I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.

The style depends on the subject.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.