How is it now to be in a free environment? How will it affect your work in the future?I don’t think that I’ve left my restrictions and constraints behind me. They are with me here. I’m an Iranian director, inspired, and nurtured by my community, my society, and my language, which I love. So, being here, cut off from all of it is also a limitation and a restriction in itself. I must now find my inspiration in other aspects, issues and themes, the first and obvious being the Iranians who live abroad. I also have an animation project that I am finding very fascinating to work on.You’ve done a lot of filmmaking under extraordinary constraints. Do you find these constraints creatively liberating in any way?I don’t think that we can celebrate restrictions, thinking that they make us more creative. Of course, it can give you impulses to find creative solutions, but I think there is no way we can justify or accept restrictions and constraints.What more can you tell us about your forthcoming animation project?It’s related to a specific chunk of contemporary Iranian history. It’s related to the life of a very interesting Iranian playwright, Abbas Nalbandian, who lived some 60 years ago. The story starts 11 years before the Iranian Revolution and ends 11 years after it. Just to refer to and recreate this period of time, is something very exciting and interesting for me. It can only be done in animation.Why do you say so?There’s one aspect historically that is really tricky. Before the revolution in Iran, a lot of Iranians said that they could see politician and religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s face on the moon. They looked at the moon and they could see his face there. This kind of collective illusion is something that I can show only in animation.How do you see the possibility of a return to Iran?Very simple: I can go back and go straight to jail. Now I have a new case with this new film. However, the first fear of the Iranian regime now is not just me or filmmakers like us. It’s the fact that there are new directors, a new generation of artiste who are ignoring censorship and who feel free to make the films that they want and who express themselves openly. But the reason I decided to flee was that I have more stories to tell. I want to go on making films. I realized that by accepting my sentence and going to jail, the only thing that I would end up being would be a victim. I didn’t want to accept this status of a victim.
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