In the end, the thing that's important about free expression is that it's the right from which all other rights are derived. If you can't articulate ideas and if you can't articulate critiques of other peoples' ideas, then you're powerless. What always increases the power of an authoritarian regime is whether it can successfully prevent people from expressing themselves.

When you are making an independent film, money is never an issue.

I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.

She's no flibberti-gibberti mamzell, but a whir-stir-get-lost-sir bundla dynamite!

It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.

The west was involved in toppling the Mossadegh government. That ultimately led to the Iranian revolution.

I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It's very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.