I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.
We don't look at each other [in the car], but instead do so only when we want to. We're allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence doesn't seem heavy or difficult.
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 and philosophers haven't said anything different with regard to experiencing life in the moment, as opposed to the belief of permanence.
As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
The Iranian government as a whole has no relationship with my films. They're not particularly interested, perhaps this kind of cinema is not very interesting to them.
I had intended to make another film, called Pocket Money, which was to be about children at a school. I was very much intrigued by the story [of Close Up] - it came into my dreams and I was very much influenced by it. So I called my producer and asked that we put aside Pocket Money and start something else, and he agreed.
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'm still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn't have this feeling with the RED one.
When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.
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.
Close-Up has affected later films that I've made.
It is a very important film, Life And Nothing More, in that what was filmed was inspired by a journey I had made just three days after an earthquake. And I speak not only of the film itself but also of the experience of being in that place, where only three days before 50,000 people had died.
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.
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.
Despite the great advantages of digital video and the great ease of using the medium, still those who use it have first to understand the sensitivities of how to best use the medium.
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 minutes, not less and not more. But the choices are the responsibility of the filmmaker. You have to choose to join the story at an arbitrary point, and you leave it at an arbitrary point.
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 think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to.
I never intended to write poems, nor to be a photographer, nor to be a film-maker. I just took many, many pictures and I would put them in an album, and then some years later I decided to show them and suddenly I was called a photographer. Same thing with my poetry. They're notes that I'd written in a book and it may be considered poetry.
I don't have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who's in my mind in reality.
The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.
The kind of sleep that I had during my own film [Certified Copy] screening in Cannes is different. It's not because of the specificity of the film. It was because of my relationship as an author to this film. Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them. Whereas this time, I didn't have that responsibility on my shoulders.
Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.
If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that's very much what I'd prefer to do.
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 whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced.
