Abbas Kiarostami: Well, Godard doesn't believe this anymore, especially since I diverted cinema off its course a bit when I made Ten.

Maybe. Beckett did make one film, actually, with Alan Schneider directing and Buster Keaton in the leading role: Film. So there is some evidence if anyone wants to prove or disprove Mr. Minghella's thesis.

It's all because of my friend Abbas Cohendari's shoes that I became a filmmaker! At the time I had passed my baccalaureate and had failed the entrance exam in painting at the School of Fine Arts. So I became a traffic cop. One day I was in Abbas Cohendari's dry goods shop and he asked me to go with him to the Tajreesh bridge. I told him that I'd rather not because I had sandals on. So he gave me a pair of new shoes, just my size, and we set off for Tajreesh Bridge. Then we went over to Farhad Ashtari's, where I met a certain Mohaqeq who ran a painting workshop. So I enrolled in his classes and took the entrance exam for the Fine Arts School over again — this time I passed. I then began working in advertising. I had left my parents' home when I was 18 and had to earn a living. In the beginning, I worked as a painter and graphic artist in a number of studios; I did book covers, posters, etc. Then I went to Tabli Film, which, at the time, was the main production center for commercials. When I offered my services as a director, they asked me to write a sketch about an isothermal water-heater. I spent the night writing a poem about water-heaters. Three evenings later, to my great astonishment, I saw a commercial on TV with my poem in it. That was how I got into commercials. Little by little, I made progress. I wrote more sketches and started directing commercials. From 1960 to 1969, I must have directed more than 150. I really enjoyed those commercials. You have to condense the introduction, the story itself, and the message into one minute; you must broach a subject, explain it quickly to everyone, and make the public want to go out and buy the product. I learned about cinema from commercials and graphic art: in a graphic project, you have a page, a column, or an insert on which to draw something that will immediately grab the reader's attention. I think graphics is the father of all arts. By its very limitations, this kind of commissioned work forces you to use your imagination. During the last few years of my work in advertising, I designed credit sequences for a few Iranian films; this was the turning point between my graphic work and my directing of non-advertising films. I discovered the camera during my work on these credit sequences.

I have many professions, and none of them appeases me. There are filmmakers who, when they are making one film, are thinking about the next. This kind of filmmaker tends not to be an artist. I am not like that. I am a vagabond. Being this vagabond leads me to all sorts of places and leads me to do all sorts of things. I spend a lot of time doing carpentry, for instance. Sometimes there is nothing that gives met the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does. Working in quiet gives me inner peace.

For me, still photography, video, and film are all elements of one spectrum. The question is how we can best get close to our subjects. And, where that goal is concerned, the future belongs to digital video. The non-actors I like to use, for example, feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crew around them, and we therefore arrive at for more intimate moments with them. Moreover, because of the requirements of the 35mm camera and the mode of production that comes with that camera, there were a lot of people who just couldn't afford to use it. Now, this digital camera makes it possible for everybody to pick it up, like a pen. If you have the right vision, and you think you are an instinctive filmmaker, there is no hindrance anymore. You just pick it up, like a pen, and work with it.

I photographed Ten and Five in digital video, but I did return to 35mm for the episode I shot in the three-episode anthology film made in Italy called Tickets. (The other two episodes are by Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi.) If you are not going to take full advantage of digital, I must say, then 35mm is a better medium — especially for shooting dramas.

Let me start by saying that I do not call myself a painter even though I do painting. It is more important to engage in painting than to label oneself a painter — I simply feel comfortable painting. When people ask met to judge their paintings, I decline and remind them that what is important is that they have been engaged in the activity of painting. Engaging in the art of painting itself is the worthwhile activity, and so I paint.

I have gotten used to looking at reality in an artistic way, especially through the viewpoint of painting. When I look at nature, I see a frame of painting. I see everything from an aesthetic angle. Even when I am in a taxi looking out the window, I put everything in a frame. This is the way I see painting, photography, and film — all interrelated and connected because they capture reality in frames. All interconnected, also, because they take advantage, or should, of mistakes, accidents, chance. I take my lead from Renoir the painter, who says that if you drip paint on your canvas, don't get too worried about it; instead try to use the drip as an element and evolve something else out of it.

The government has not shown any of my films for the past ten years. I think they don't understand my films and so prevent them from being shown just in case there is a message they don't want to get out. They tend to support films that are stylistically very different from mine — melodramas. The government doesn't just own the cinemas, but also the means of production, so I have to work around them. The government is not in my way, but it is not assisting me, either. We lead our separate lives. Two things you have to keep in mind: one, an Iranian official hardly ever remains in his position for a very long time; when one goes and another comes, that is the best time to try again. Two films of my have escaped the sharp censorship scissors, probably because the censors did not quite understand what they should censor in them! A movie is good, I think, when the censor does not understand what should be censored. If a film is made from which a censor cuts some parts, then those parts should have been cut, because he understood them!

Let me add that the Iranian cinema today is distinctive from that of the rest of the world not only because of its unique vision and perspective, but also because it reflects the way in which each filmmaker has come to terms with, and found ways of expressing himself within, the limitations that exist. I like to use the phrase restrictive to describe the conditions I work under rather than oppressive, as some people do; and I understand that oppressive means many different things in many different contexts, but for us as artists and filmmakers what we are dealing with are the realities of restrictions, and I like to approach the subject of censorship from that angle. I look at these restrictions not in the context of the cinema alone but in the broader context of life. For me these restrictions exist everywhere and have always been there. Life in the East has never been without them. We have always had to live within certain boundaries. Life is the combination of, and the movement between, restriction and freedom — the field of action is limited, and the field of power is limited. When we were kids we were always told what we could do and what we couldn't, and how far we could go in doing things we could.

The best example I can give for this concept comes from the classroom, when our teacher told us to do a composition. When he gave us a topic, we would write about that topic and come up with something worthwhile. But when he did not specify the topic and left us free to choose our own, we usually couldn't come up with something worth writing about. We needed to be told what the boundaries and restrictions were. This has been the nature of our society and has been replicated in the realities of our film industry. For instance, during the first four years of the Iranian revolution, there was a great deal of chaos in the film industry because not many rules were set yet. Interestingly enough, most of the Iranian moviemakers didn't produce much during this time, though a great deal could have been done. No one used the opportunity because everyone was waiting to find out what the restrictions were!

I don't want to imply that these limitations are good and should be there, but we have been brought up with them and it is in our mentality. This is not limited to my profession — it's in every profession: limitation makes people more creative. I have a friend who is an architect. He tells me that he is at his best professionally when he designs structures for odd lots, because these pieces of land do not fit into the normal pattern and he has to work within a framework of great limitation. So, he must be creative and he enjoys this. It is these restrictions that provide an opportunity for people to be creative.

There was controversy about the movie, but after I talked with the authorities, they accepted the fact that this is not a movie about suicide — it's about the choice we have in life, to end it whenever we want. We have a door we can open at any time, but we choose to stay, and the fact that we have this choice is, I think, God's kindness: God is kind because he has given us this choice. The authorities were satisfied with that explanation. A sentence from the Romanian-French philosopher E. M. Cioran helped me a lot: "Without the possibility of suicide, I would have killed myself long ago." A Taste of Cherry is about the possibility of living, and how we have the choice to live. Life isn't forced on us: that is the main theme of the movie.

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. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.

No, I'm not sure of this at all. I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; I show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for those of us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.

I can't answer this question. I think religion is very personal, and the tragedy for our country is that the personal aspect has been destroyed. It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to say that I am religious, but I won't. This most personal aspect of our lives has become the tool of the government's power. The value of people is equated with their religiosity.

Such restrictions aside for the moment, I simply don't like the role of women as mothers, or as lovers for that matter. Or the role of women as victims, beaten and long-suffering. That's not my experience. Or women as exceptional. I don't like showing exceptions. Especially women as heroes, since it doesn't correspond to the real situation. And there's another role, women as decorative objects — not only in Iranian but in world cinema as well. So what am I left with? I did feature a woman in Ten, though.

Definitely. I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself. I divorced 22 years ago. In Iran, while women can sue for divorce — only, I might add, if they charge their husbands with abuse or drug addiction — they are not economically able to look after their children afterwards and, as a result, often see their children only rarely. Women, after divorce, lose their independence, and therefore they are less and less able to take responsibility for their children. It often results in tragedy for all concerned, and I was trying to explore that in Ten (below).

The woman in the film, who has divorced her husband, drives around Tehran with various passengers: her son, a friend, a prostitute, and an old woman. And I try, especially, to depict the consequences of her divorce in the person of her aggressive young son, who treats his mother disrespectfully from the passenger seat. He thus seems, already at the tender age of seven, to have internalized the masculine license of my patriarchal — some would say "sexist" — society.

Working with non-professionals has got an advantage for me, in that they correct my script. That's the reason I use them. If I write something and it does not sound right coming from the mouth of the non-professional actor, if he cannot say it naturally, then I know it's wrong. The non-professional actors "interfere" during the entire period of filming. And finally, that helps me to produce a better movie. I do not want to make it sound as if using professional actors is negative, but I am able to create the personality of the characters of the film by working in my way. Usually directors bring stars to play the role of the normal people, but I bring normal people to play the role of themselves. And they cannot play any other role except their own. There is a saying that every person can be a romantic writer if he writes about his own love life. Therefore, these non-professional actors are performing very well, because they are playing themselves. Once you explain the scene to them, they just start talking, beyond what I would have imagined. It is like a cycle, and I don't know where it starts and ends: I don't know whether I'm teaching them what to say, or they are teaching me what to receive!

Non-professionals "do" less, and that fits my scripts, which do not spell things out so clearly. And both of these — the use of non-professionals and the writing of pared-down scripts — help the viewer to participate more in the filmmaking process. I am in favor of the "half-made film," which the spectator must complete with his mind. The cinema of the future is the cinema of the director and the viewer. I make one film as a filmmaker, but the audience, based on that film, makes 100 movies in their minds. Every audience member can make his own movie. This is what I strive for. Sometimes, when my audiences tell me about the mental movies they have made based on my movie, I am surprised, and I become the audience for their movies as they are describing them to me. My movie has only functioned as a base for them to make their movies. There is a Persian expression that captures this notion: the translation is "seeing with borrowed eyes," which defines my desire to have the audience both see what is in a given scene and imagine, with their "borrowed eyes," what is outside that scene. Let me put this another way. The usual way in film is to show — and to say — something. But my aim is to create a cinema in which we see how much we can do without actually showing, or saying, it. How much use we can make of the imagination of the spectator. You must be able to imagine what is going on beyond what is physically shown, because you are actually only showing a corner of reality. It is a good idea when pictures and action guide you to something which is outside the story without actually showing it. I believe in Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition.

Yes. The idea not to end movies with some kind of conclusion occurred to me several years ago. Most of the time, people go to see a film with the expectation that a story will be told. I do not like this arrangement where there is a dichotomy between me, as the storyteller, and the spectator, as the one sitting there and watching the story as such. I prefer to believe that the spectators are much more intelligent and actually see it as unfair that I get the chance to captivate them for two hours telling them the story, ending it the way I say it must end, and so on. So I actually want to give them more credit by involving them and distributing the sense of belonging or creation between myself and the spectator. Some artists like their movies to be perfect as they describe it, but I don't seek that kind of perfection. To me perfection is defined by how much the spectator can engage in the movie, and so a good movie is one that involves the spectator as a part of it and not as a captive person.

I do not have very complete scripts for my films, as I have already indicated. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character in reality who's in my mind. When I find that character, I try to spend time with him and get to know him very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life. It's a long process and may take six months. I only make notes; I don't write out dialogue in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of that person. When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with the actor-characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; they are very much closer to real people than anything I could try to create. I give them something, it's true, but I also take from them.

There is a Rumi poem from about 1,000 years ago that helps to explains this — it goes something like this: You are like the ball subject to my polo stick; I set you in motion, but once you're off and running, I am the one in pursuit. You are making me run, too! Therefore, when you see the end result, it is difficult to see who is the director, me or them. Ultimately, everything belongs to the actors — I just manage the situation. This kind of directing, I think, is very similar to being a football coach. You prepare your players and place them in the right places, but once the game is on, there is nothing much you can do — you can smoke a cigarette or get nervous, but you can't do much else. While shooting Ten — which, as you know, consists of ten scenes set in the front of a car — 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 the actors would work better in my absence. Directors don't always create — they can also destroy with too many demands. Using non-actors has its own set of rules and really requires that you allow them to do their own thing.

This practice is very much rooted in that period of my life. If I hadn't started with children, I would never have arrived at this style. Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct them or order them to do something. When I met Akira Kurosawa in Japan, one question he asked me was, "How did you actually make the children act the way they do? I do sometimes have children in my films, but I find that I reduce and reduce their presence until I have to get rid of them because there's no way that I can direct them." My own thought is that if one is very grand, like an emperor on a horse, it's very hard for children to relate to that; you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.

My car is my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate feeling when I am in a car with someone next to me. We are in the most comfortable seats because we are not facing each other, but sitting side by side. We don't look at each other constantly, but instead do so only when we want to. We are allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence does not seem heavy or difficult. Nobody serves anybody. And there are many other aspects to this experience, as well. One most important thing is that the car transports us from one place to another.

Thank you for your very positive view on the issue. Unfortunately, film critics like you are very few in America, but there are many, many critics of Iran. It is very important for us film people 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 peoples. One of the mandates of art cinema, as you well know, is to show the universal reality behind the daily headlines.

Thank you for comparing me with those three filmmakers. I, too, think they were making great films, but, at the same time, the Hollywood cinema wasn't as dominant then as it is now. It is a more formidable competitor today, and that's the reason its movies don't leave any audience for us. The fact is that movies train the eyes of their audience, and when they have been trained on these types of Hollywood movies, it is very difficult to then convert them to our films. But, sort of unknowingly, the Hollywood cinema is going in a direction that may end up helping our kind of cinema. Audiences are being left dissatisfied now. The viewers leave a film unfulfilled, hungry and uncertain as to the experience they have had; and this is where the genuine filmmaker has the chance to ensnare them, to win them over.

It's because the films have gotten them used to expecting action and not pleasure, because the technicians are making the films and not filmmakers. We are going to get to a point where that will become clear and the situation will have to change.

Yes, I believe so, because otherwise art would have no purpose. Should religion not prove successful at accomplishing that mission, art always can attempt it. They both point in the same direction. Religion points to another world, whereas art points to a better existence. One is an invitation, an offering to a faraway place, the other to a place that is closer by but nonetheless difficult to reach.

Hou Hsiao-hsien is one. Tarkovsky's works separate me completely from physical life, and are the most spiritual films I have seen. What Fellini did in parts of his movies — bringing the dream life into film — Tarkovsky did as well. Theo Angelopoulos's movies also achieve this type of spirituality at certain moments.

Well, the cinema has been referred to as "the seventh art," and you can interpret that in two ways: either it includes the other arts and is some sort of summation of them; or, maybe, it is the most complete art form. But even if the cinema is the seventh art, it's ironic that all other art forms, such as painting and music, have gone through stages of evolution and have changed. For the cinema, however, this has not happened yet; the cinema is the same as it always was: it relies too much on storytelling. When I talk about "poetic cinema," I'm not talking about sending a humanistic message. I'm talking about the cinema's being like poetry, possessing the complicated qualities of poetry, and also having the vast potential of poetry — having the capabilities of a prism.

This kind of cinema — the prism-like cinema — has an enduring capability, and, in any given situation, in any given time period, you can relate to it in a different way and people can discover themselves in it. I think cinema should follow the other arts, go through the same process of development, and assume the same outlook that they do. But the viewers have to make a concession, in the sense of not expecting only entertainment from films, in the same way that, when they don't understand poetry, they don't fault the poetry for being bad poetry. They live with it. And when they go to hear music, they don't expect to hear a story. When they are looking at an abstract painting, it brings other things than a narrative to mind; it is through imagistic association that they "get" the meaning of it, not through the apprehension of immediate or linear reality. I wish they would do the same in front of a movie screen.

Yes, Five is at the crossroads between poetry, photography, and film. It's an experimental work of art. It has to be, since it features waves breaking, ducks waddling, walkers promemading, a pack of dogs, and, finally, moonlight on waves!

I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. I know one thing, however. Many viewers may come out of the theater not satisfied, and yet they won't be able to forget the movie. I know they'll be talking about it during their next dinner. I want them to be a little restless about my movies, and keep trying to find something in them. In that sense, they will be seeing my movies more than once.

Yes, that was the first film in which I used this new format. At first I didn't use the digital camera as a serious work tool. I took it with me more like a still camera, to take some notes with it. But when I actually started using it — and when I realized its possibilities and what I could do with them — I realized that I have wasted, in a way, thirty years of my career using the 35mm camera, because, as I argued earlier in our conversation, that camera, for the type of intimate, immediate work that I do, is more of a hindrance than a communication tool.

Yes, actually. I was lucky that this new medium appeared to me between these two films. Because I also had that same sense of exhaustion that the Engineer has in The Wind Will Carry Us; this new camera appeared to me, in a sense, like an angel and saved my artistic life. Not necessarily in terms of my mental approach to making a film, but in terms of the ease of making one.

The UN, since they knew that I had made films for children for so many years, decided to invite me to make a film about the children orphaned by AIDS in Uganda. Their intention was a sort of general mobilization to attack this problem, and this movie became an invitation to the rest of the world to help these orphaned kids in their plight.

I went to Uganda because it had less civil strife. Sometimes we drove for hours at night without there being a flicker of light. And people would be lining the road, dressed in white. There was no light at all. No electricity, no candles, no light at all. During the day, everything there is very green and beautiful. I saw people who are poverty-stricken but extremely rich within. They are very happy people — something I've almost never seen anywhere. I asked a friend why these people were so happy. He said it was because of the three things these people do not have: pollution, tension, and competition. The competition that they do have, however, is a big one, between life and death. And that's why their lives have so much meaning, because death, in the form of AIDS, is so close at hand. They're happy just to be alive.

They have kept the whole question of AIDS under the rug in Iran; it is like a secret illness. There was an attempt in 2001 to bring it out into the public arena for discussion, but this attempt was aborted. To me, AIDS is an international epidemic and every country potentially can be affected by it. Therefore, it should be discussed on an international level. Unfortunately, AIDS doesn't require a visa.

I didn't quite officially accept the invitation, but I agreed to go to the area for a visit. So, the trip was a sort of location scouting, but we had cameras with us and we started shooting — not for the purpose of making the actual film. Then, when we finished shooting, we looked at the footage we had and decided that maybe we could make the movie out of this footage.

I agree with you about this style of working. A good movie is made by an initial burst of energy that contributes to the quality of the work. When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in, and actually helps, the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.

You are obviously doing your part because, in your criticism, you point out the films that are made with smaller budgets — the films that are small in name only. It's not possible to change this situation dramatically because the wheel of film is being turned by industry, by business. Many people work within that film industry, and a lot of people go to see films just to be entertained. That sort of film exists and that is as it should be. And that is the cinema which allows our films to be made, because otherwise there would be no reason to show our films. What you do, pointing a finger at the films that are different, is all that can be done.

I think it is going to happen little by little. There is no choice for cinema other than to become a little bit more internalized, more intimate, more profound. To begin with, the technique and the facilities created by the commercial film industry are going to self-destruct eventually. The bombastic film will destroy itself, because it is so full of itself; it will become so full that it will implode. So there will be a return to, or revisiting of, a past cinema at that point.

I was channel-surfing last night with the remote control in my hotel room, and the two times I paused anywhere and focused, I was looking at black-and-white films. And that was not even a conscious choice. One was a Tarzan picture with Johnny Weissmuller. It was at least watchable, and even though it was just entertainment, it felt like a healthier thing. The other, newer, color films I couldn't even watch, because there was so much going on and they were moving so fast that it just disturbed my vision; it disturbed me. Therefore I believe that even the eyes of the commercial viewership are going to need some serenity, some calm, soon. This itself will increase the opportunities for independent films. And, of course, your relentless finger-pointing at mindless action films will do this as well.

I completely agree. As I have implied, moviemakers are always being pushed to focus on the excitation and maniplation of the audience. The question to which I don't know the answer is whether or not the viewer wants to be manipulated. I don't know anyone who says, "Instead of letting me see reality, manipulate me. I would prefer it." This is an illness that comes from somewhere in society — maybe from escapist movies themselves.

I get my material from all around me. When I leave my house in the morning, those ordinary people are the ones I come into contact with. In my entire life I have never met a star — somebody I have seen on the screen. And I believe that any artist finds his material in what's around him. Human beings and their probems are the most important raw material for any film.

The biggest impact of cinema on the viewer is that it allows his imagination to take flight. There are two possible results of this. Perhaps it will make his ordinary, day-to-day life more bearable. On the other hand, it may result in his day-to-day life seeming so bad to him that, as a result of his newfound awareness, he may decide to change his life.

It's a difficult question and I cannot answer precisely how artists do that, but the ones who do are the artists, the ones who accomplish the task of turning that painful experience of humanity into art. Without becoming cynical. Making it possible for everyone to get some pleasure out of pain, making beauty out of ugliness or desolation. And the painful experience of humanity, be it in Iran, Africa, or the United States, isn't going to change any time soon. In my relatively short lifetime, I haven't experienced a reduction of injustice anywhere, let alone in my own country. And never mind a solution to the problem of injustice. People keep referring to the "global village," but in Africa, in Uganda, I watched as parents put the corpses of their children in boxes, tied them to the backs of bicycles, and pedaled away — barefoot. I'm quoting an author I don't know who said that, by the twenty-first century, humanity will only be four years old. I think that applies. Humanity today, in 2005, is just about at the stage of a four-year-old. So we'll have to wait a long time before humanity even reaches the maturity of an adolescent.

I don't think so. I actually sometimes think that at least in my country art has grown the most when the social situation has been the worst. It seems to me that artists are a compensatory mechanism, a defense mechanism in those kinds of unfavorable circumstances.

Yes, the exact imitation of life is not art. There is a comment by Godard that life is a film that is not well-made. When you make a film you have to make it well, you have to edit it, you have to choose, you have to eliminate. You have to create its essential truth, not merely render what exists in reality.

Music is a perfect art by itself. It's very powerful and impressive. I dare not try to compete with music in my films. I can't engage in that kind of activity, as the use of music has a great deal of emotional charge, and I do not want to place such an aesthtic burden on my spectator. Music plays on the spectators' emotions, makes them excited or sad, and takes them through a veritable emotional roller-coaster ride with its ups and downs, and I respect my spectator too much to do that to him.

The answer to your question is yes and no. Each movie has a national ID or birth certificate of its own. Yet a movie in the end is about human beings, about humanity. All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one common thing, and that is what's inside all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings, we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what the person's language or background or race was. Our blood circulates exactly the same way, our nervous system and our eyes work the same way, we laugh and cry the same way, we feel pain the same way. The teeth we have in our mouths — no matter what our nationality or background is — ache in exactly the same way. If we want to divide cinema and the subjects of cinema, the way to do it, finally, is to talk about pain and about happiness. These are common among all countries.

This can be an appropriate interpretation by an intelligent viewer or a film critic. But this could not have been something I was thinking about as I was shooting the film. And actually, I was not. But now that we are revisiting the film, I tend to agree that it can be seen in different way, one of them being from the angle of identity. And if not identity, then the state of collective depression after a big revolution, in which someone like Sabzian — the obsessive cinephile who got caught impersonating the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf — did not find a thing he was looking for, and people like the Ahankhah family lost some things they had. But these people have somehow come together. This was pointed out to me once by a non-Iranian viewer, and I found it to be so true. This viewer thought these were people from opposite ends who come together under particular circumstances similar to those of an earthquake or an apocalypse of some kind. A common problem brought these people closer together.

Someone once told me the reason I was drawn to these characters was that they were all abnormal. And I think the abnormal people who go to great lengths and break the boundaries and cross the lines do us a sevice, in a sense, by telling us, "The limits you have set for us are too confining and we need more space." We should look at abnormal people, that is, from an artist's point of view. We should not act like a court and put them on trial. We should never want to display their shortcomings. We should show them as examples of people who didn't receive proper and timely care. Despite all the laws designed for the protection of deprived people, they were somehow left uncared for and started using their imaginations at a point where there was no room left for using one's imagination — which then will inevitably turn in on itself.

Yes, they are the products of the same type of education and society as the thirty something Hossein Sabzian in Close-Up. I remind you of what the actor Hossein says in the film. He says, "I am the child from the film Traveler who's left behind." And I would say the child from Traveler is somewhat like the kids from Homework. Those kids are all like the kids from Where is the Friend's House? I think these kids are somewhat alike, and they just grow up — or don't.

We have a proverb in Iran that captures perfectly what you just said: "The fruitful tree bends." Thank you.

Filmography of Feature Films:

» Bread and Alley, 1970
» Recess, 1972
» The Traveler, 1974
» The Wedding Suit, 1976
» Report, 1977
» Where Is the Friend's House?, 1987
» Homework, 1990
» Close-Up, 1990
» Life and Nothing More . . . , 1992
» Through the Olive Trees, 1994
» A Taste of Cherry, 1997
» The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999
» A.B.C. Africa, 2001
» Ten, 2002
» Five, 2004
» Tickets, 2005 (one segment of a three-episode anthology film)