Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbafis an Iranian film director, writer, film editor, and producer. He has made more than 20 feature films, won some 50 awards and been a juror in more than 15 major film festivals. His award-winning films include Kandahar; his latest documentary is The Gardener and latest feature The President...
NationalityIranian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth29 May 1957
country years numbers
Do you know that every day, 10 people in Afghanistan are injured by landmines? It will continue for the next 50 years, because the country has the largest number of landmines in the world.
artist people kind
Usually people like to categorise artists. With my films, I categorise people: if I know which one of my movies you like, I can tell which kind of a person you are.
iran film made
From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.
people legs film
When we began filming, these people had legs, but as we were filming, they had been injured and they were brought to the hospital to have their legs amputated, and that's where we found them and asked them to come and be part of the film.
dirty mind world
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.
real way film
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.
two years style
If I make two films in a year, they'll be different. This is my style - I can't have just one way.
successful tables want
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.
people living-my-life easy
I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.
clothes smugglers beard
I myself had to grow a longer beard and Afghan clothes. I was in danger of being kidnapped by smugglers, though I didn't know it at the time.
hands mirrors pieces
Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
art struggle years
I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.
thinking world afghanistan
The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.
expression people littles
Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.