For me, its better to live without looking over your shoulder, worrying about who is controlling your phone, maybe poisoning your food.

I used to believe that people are only born once, but now I feel I have been reborn, like I was given a new life. I see myself as a child, full of energy and hope.

I always loved music, and I always wanted to make a film about it, but I could never do it because of the censorship that was around.

In Kurdistan, theres a lot of hardship - a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

You need a team that speaks your language.

Im free - but Im also not free because there are millions of young people living in Iran. A filmmaker can only do a little.

I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

I love music, I make films with music, I eat with music, I sleep with music, I think with music. Music makes me dream, it strengthens my creativity.

Actually, the only thing I regret is not making more underground films and bringing them with me as historical documents.

I use humour a lot. My foundation is tragic, but my appearance is humorous.

Writing is magic happening on paper

When you don't have your work clearly defined, there can never be any finish point.

To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.

I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.

Perhaps all human progress stems from the tension between two basic drives: to have just what everyone else has and to have what no one has.

I try to leave my work at the door when I leave the set. It's almost like summer camp. You go in hard, then you leave, and it's done.

God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace.

Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.

Never thought I’d see the day when you’d throw your arms around a vam - someone like me