When I met Akira Kurosawa in Japan, one question he asked me was, "How did you actually make the children act the way they do? I do have children in ….

I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me ….

I thought that I had been asked every kind of question possible..

My way of expression is full of complications and mystery because that's my perception of life..

My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whet….

I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they ch….

When the film [Certified Copy] was in the Cannes Festival, I realized that the fact of having it shot in a different culture, in a different language….

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been el….

Those same people, when they leave the theater, when they look behind the curtains they are curious about their neighbors, they can guess if their ne….

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in co….

In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you..

This concept that you refer to in Buddhism is something I've been nurtured with through the history of my country for 700, 800 years - Persian poets ….

When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in ….

I do believe in [Robert] Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition..

The starting point and the ending point are nothing but two arbitrary choices. You make them as in soccer games, where they chose that it's 90 minute….

I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my wo….

I believe there's only good cinema and bad cinema..

Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language..

This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films..

The one-word cinema wasn't possible for me anymore. I'd hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I'd turn back..

The [Iranian] government grapples with more important issues and we can maybe say that these films don't really exist for them. It's not about whethe….