Bahman Ghobadi Quotations

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

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 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.

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

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.

Actually, the only thing I regret is not making more underground films and bringing them with me as historical documents.

You need a team that speaks your language.

Lying and corruption are in the Iranian society in all sense of the world, and if you do research about married women, you see that a lot of them tell you they get a lot of enjoyment from breaking the rules of corruption, because just for the fact that they break the rules, it makes them oppose the system.