27 Quotes by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

I'm not playing myself. It's a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn't have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.

If I make two films in a year, they'll be different. This is my style - I can't have just one way.

When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I'd finished them. It took me a while to change that habit.

In many ways, it is very real, because I sat there for 9 days, and it was constantly happening, and that was the 9 days of making the film. But you can't say that it's 100% true, because there are places where I've been intrusive and interfered.

The question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It's a dirty business to produce such a horrible device.

Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.

But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan.

I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.