But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan.

I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.

Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.

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

Usually people like to categorise artists. With my films, I categorise people: if I know which one of my movies you like, I can tell which kind of a person you are.

When we began filming, these people had legs, but as we were filming, they had been injured and they were brought to the hospital to have their legs amputated, and that's where we found them and asked them to come and be part of the film.

Do you know that every day, 10 people in Afghanistan are injured by landmines? It will continue for the next 50 years, because the country has the largest number of landmines in the world.