Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, ‘Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.’ That’s not valid for people who want to think and reflect.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIMy car’s my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We’re in the most comfortable seats because we’re not facing each other, but sitting side by side.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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I think, just as footballers play better at home, maybe film-makers, too, create better at home, even though the rules of football are the same wherever you go.
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I think I really produce my best work in Iran.
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I believe there’s only good cinema and bad cinema.
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I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.
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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.
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There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he’s so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I’m not impressed by any technicality.
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When I’m in the process of making a movie I’m not thinking about the finished result, and whether people have to see it once or more than once, and what the reaction to it will be. I just make it, and then I live with the consequences.
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When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit.
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This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark.
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I have no advice for anyone on how to live.
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Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can’t believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I’m interested in.
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There are certainties in existence, but love is something much harder to define than light and dark, life and death. I think saying you are “like” someone in love sounds right.
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If we’re not going to take full advantage of digital, then 35mm is a better medium. Especially for shooting dramas – I have no problem with 35mm.
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I don’t like reverse-angle shots – I find them very fake and very untruthful to the viewer.
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In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men – maybe that’s a common point with Shirin – the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.
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I really haven’t seen The Report in a long time. I don’t have a copy, but I’ll have to see it again. I think it would be good to put both these men next to each other.
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I think life is so difficult to catch, it’s so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.
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It’s not so much a question of whether we’ve shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.
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A movie is about human beings, about humanity.
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I think that in life, being is nothing but an illusion. If we acknowledge that and accept the fact that we are in between states, that we are moving, and this movement is the nature of our lives
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I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.
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Anything I’ve not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.
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Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
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My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
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The day we run out of petrol is the day Iran will be free.
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I didn’t just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI