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I don't have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who's in my mind in reality.

Abbas Kiarostami

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Abbas Kiarostami
Age: 75 †
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Died: 2016
Died: January 1
Actor
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Film Director
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Film Producer
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More quotes by Abbas Kiarostami

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I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
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Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
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I did not have a script [of Close Up]. I made notes in the evenings and we filmed during the day over 40 days.I didn't sleep a wink for those 40 nights. I have a picture from the end of the shoot, and in it I have lost all my hair.
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There are certainties in existence, but love is something much harder to define than light and dark, life and death. I think saying you are like someone in love sounds right.
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The Iranian government as a whole has no relationship with my films. They're not particularly interested, perhaps this kind of cinema is not very interesting to them.
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As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.
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The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.
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I think that if you're a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.
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In my mind, there isn't as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.
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I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn't deserve this heritage.
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In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.
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I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they choose it and tell it, for me, the best criteria for whether they are right for making films. There's nothing more important than being able to tell your story orally.
Abbas Kiarostami
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It's true that the best way of knowing yourself is to put yourself into different situations.
Abbas Kiarostami
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If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.
Abbas Kiarostami
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It was a film that I knew, that I had seen, that I was familiar with, but I wasn't anxious about it at any point during the screening. I snoozed twice, and this is something I couldn't have imagined that I would feel detached, as I did with this film [Certified Copy].
Abbas Kiarostami
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When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The day we run out of petrol is the day Iran will be free.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!
Abbas Kiarostami
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I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic so I have my doubts.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The fact of having this very new context, this unheard-of way of working, for me was very pleasant. I didn't feel that I was working, that I had any kind of burden to wear, to carry. I really was very happy and very lighthearted during the whole process of making the film [Certified Copy], of shooting it.
Abbas Kiarostami