Abbas Kiarostami Quotes

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.

It’s very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.

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.

I think that if you’re a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.

As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.

I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.

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 whether they like it or don’t; it’s just not very important to them.

I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it’s inside a frame.

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 stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.

I only make notes, I don’t write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of person.