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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.