“The only thing that I can do is hold a mirror in front of men and women, in front of the viewer in the theater, to reflect. There is nothing but reflection that I could intend to offer the viewer of the film.”

My car is 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.

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

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 work, I wouldn’t deserve this heritage.

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

While shooting Ten I was sitting in the backseat, but I didn’t interfere. Sometimes, I was following in another car, so I was not even present on the “set”, because I thought they would work better in my absence.

I have received the digital camera as a blessing. It has really changed my life as a filmmaker, because I don’t use my camera anymore as a camera. I don’t feel it as a camera.

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.

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.

I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts.

We are nothing but a link between our culture and what we can actually produce.

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

In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.

I’m still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn’t have this feeling with the RED one.

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.

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.

Not from weakness or lack of ability to do so, but because Hamas does not wish for further fronts to be opened against it around the world

There’s nobody living who couldn’t stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall …. Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting.

In which (or where) everyone is mainly (or mostly) trying to assert oneself in front of others (“devant les autres”, Fr.), to appear, and hoping to find in society (“mondaine”, Fr.) relationships some advantages for his interest and vanity (or vainglory or conceit”, Fr).

Some artists never see their work in front of an audience.

Success on the front of women’s rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances.

I lost my brother at a young age. He got hit by a car right in front of me. I had to be strong for my mom.

We’re always trying to make the process apparent. So, we have learned to try and never rely on a technological solution when an analogue one is in front of us.

Maybe some are so busy waiting, they forget what indescribable beauty is right there in front of them.