THE CONTEXT: A lot of Western viewers first became aware of you through Kiarostami's film Close Up, where Hossein Sabzian conned a family on the basis that he was you. What was it like for you to be impersonated in this way?

MOHSEN MAKHMALBAF: Before it happened, I didn't want to be photographed. I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me. But after Sabzian, I let people photograph me. It wasn't just because of him; the situation was so bad that someone else went and got married in my name! And another person went to a hotel in the north of Iran and gave a false card with my name, borrowed money and disappeared. Incidents like that were happening quite often, and it forced me to accept to be photographed. But it's not very pleasant. I like to watch people, but now when I walk on the streets, before I get a chance to watch them, they notice me, and look at me.

C: That much is clear in Salaam Cinema, where your auditions are swamped by the public. Why do you think cinema and film-makers are so popular in Iran?

MM: Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves. Salaam Cinema is a good example – it shows how people use cinema as a medium for their expression.

C: In Salaam Cinema, you play a film director called Mohsen Makhmalbaf, holding auditions for his film, all of which you did. How much of what we see is absolutely real, though?

MM: 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.

C: How much of the Makhmalbaf character is you, and how much is a character?

MM: 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. But yes, of course, in many other films, there's a part of me that does appear, for example, in Close Up, and A Moment Of Innocence.

C: Tell me about A Moment Of Innocence.

MM: I love it.

C: It's your recreation of an incident when you were 17, and you stabbed a policeman. Why did you do that?

MM: I was involved with a group of activists, and we went to disarm this policeman, because we thought that it was through the use of arms that we could get rid of the Shah at the time. But in prison, I realised that the Shah was in our hearts and minds, and this was what had to be changed. 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.

C: How did you spend your time in prison?

MM: I read a lot. From 7 in the morning to 11 at night, I was reading. I don't think one can find any other time in one's life to be left alone so much to read in peace like that. When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I'd finished them. It took me a while to change that habit.

C: Would you say you have a consistent style as a film-maker?

MM: If I make two films in a year, they'll be different. This is my style – I can't have just one way. Because what is the way? The style depends on the subject. In two years, I made A Moment Of Innocence, Salaam Cinema and Gabbeh – all different. 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.

C: Let's talk about Kandahar. In the film, we see a lot of landmine victims. Are they all real people?

MM: Yes. Every one of them is real, and it's very sad. 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. 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.

C: Were they happy to be part of it?

MM: Yes, they were, because they felt that there was someone who was actually talking about their pain. 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. Do you know much about Afghanistan? I want to give you some statistics. Afghanistan has 20 million population; out of that, 6.5 million have been scattered around the world. 2.5 million have been killed in the last 20 years, or died because of famine or hunger – one person every five minutes.

C: Given all this, what are you hoping your film will do?

MM: Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity. But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan. If there were 10 films made in the next few years about Afghanistan, people would begin to understand it better. 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.

C: While the film clearly tackles a specific situation, it seems to be making a wider point as well: that any claims to the exclusive truth are dangerous. That's certainly relevant to the problems of Afghanistan, but isn't it also capable of wider application?

MM: 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. In Afghanistan, this is the problem, because everybody holds a piece of that mirror, and they all look at it and claim that they hold the entire truth.

C: Tell me about your family business. How was it that your daughter Samira got into film-making too?

MM: Five years ago, Samira did not want to continue in the regular school system in Iran. To help her with her education, I set up a home school. It wasn't just for my family, it was open to other friends. Over time, they learned about cinema and other arts, and then they began to do practical work. I've heard about brothers making films, but I've never heard about whole families making films like this. We didn't intend to do it; it wasn't something that we planned – it just gradually happened.

SF Said