Quotes

[observation, 2014] I'm really optimistic about the future of Iranian cinema because of all these young and talented filmmakers...What makes me hopeful is this pool of young filmmakers can use all-digital cameras to make their own movies. There was a time when the government had a monopoly on all the filmmaking equipment. But right now you don't have to go to the government to make your films.

I want you to put yourself in my shoes as a filmmaker who can't do anything else but make films, and doesn't want to do anything else. How much time do I have left? Do I have twenty years left to live? I cannot stay idle. I know this is what they want. They let me out of a small prison and released me to a much larger one.When I was in a small prison I knew there was nothing I could do there. Every movement was being watched. ..Now that I am so-called 'free', but in reality in a larger prison, I have to do something and cannot stay idle and let my life be wasted.

To tell you the truth, at some point in my career I couldn't see myself doing a movie like ' Closed Curtain', something that delves into the imagination of an artist - but with a completely different language. It's part of what my career has come to.

I'm fed up with surreptitiously making everything in very confined spaces, and not having the freedom to work as I used to...It makes me feel sick thinking of all these projects I'd like to do, but I don't have the ability to make them.

[press conference for It Was Just an Accident (2025) at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, asked about the violence in the film] My films are always inspired by the environment in which I find myself. I hadn't gone to prison previously; my environment was just Iranian society. What I could see, observe, inspired my films - the daily life of perfectly normal people. But once you've been sent to prison, inevitably you're influenced and impacted by what you experience there and what you see. I don't know whether I'd refer to this as violence, however. Non-violence also can be found in violence. Throughout the film, one of the recurring themes is to avoid violence and this is directly mentioned by several of the characters. In this film, we show different groups, different ways of reacting to what is happening, just like any society today. In Iranian society currently, you have all sorts of different groups, very radical people and very simple people. Perhaps you read violence into this but everyone can interpret things in their own way. People perceive the film no doubt differently and will interpret things differently as a result.