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.

Time magazine selected Makhmalbaf's 2001 film Kandahar as one of top 100 films of all time. Makhmalbaf left Iran in 2005 shortly after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and now lives in Paris following the events of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.