Quotes of the Day

One of the hot tickets at the New York Film Festival last week was Ten, a deceptively simple movie about an Iranian woman and her car. Its two screenings sold out immediately, says festival director Richard Peña. But one key invitee wasn't able to make it — the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami, who made Ten and was scheduled to lead a post-screening discussion about it. Because of post-9/11 security measures, he was stuck at home in Tehran. Asked about the matter, Kiarostami gives a modest shrug of resignation. "Perhaps you should write a piece on the role of terrorists in filmmaking," he says.

New U.S. immigration rules require a 90-day background check on some visa applicants, making it especially difficult for men from Muslim countries to obtain entry permits. When Kiarostami — whose 1997 Taste of Cherry won the best picture award at Cannes — submitted his visa request at the U.S. embassy in Paris, he learned he would not be granted one before December. Another director might have called a press conference to denounce the Americans. But with a modesty that also characterizes his work, Kiarostami, 62, refused to use his stature even to seek a waiver. "Why should I be given any more consideration than an elderly grandmother hoping to visit relatives?" he says. His friend and fellow director Aki Kaurismäki of Finland boycotted the festival in solidarity.

Ten, Kiarostami's latest film, also reflects his unobtrusive approach. Shot with two digital cameras affixed to the dashboard of the car in which the entire film takes place, it records the young driver's conversations with ten passengers as she ferries them around Tehran. With its sparse format and pungent dialogue — such as the woman's heated exchange with her angry, articulate 10-year-old son, who is furious that in order to obtain a divorce, she accused his father of drug abuse — Ten works at an astonishing level of emotional detail and conveys a huge amount of information about its main character, her passengers and their society.

Kiarostami brings to his craft a rigorous technique that he honed as a graphic designer and illustrator before beginning his filmmaking career making advertising shorts in Tehran in 1950, 29 years before the fall of the Shah. In 1969 he was one of the founding members of Kanun, a youth culture institute set up by the Pahlavi regime that became the center of a new wave in Iranian cinema. During the '80s Kiarostami remained at Kanun, now the Islamic Republic's state film body. Though visually daring and often playfully provocative, the films he made during this time were overtly non-controversial.

Today, with all that has changed in Iran, Kiarostami still finds himself both a part of and apart from the lives of the ordinary Iranians his work depicts so faithfully. His films have earned him a cult following outside Iran, but audiences at home have been less won over by his deceptively simple deconstructions of the country's emotional and social landscape. "When the public in Iran goes to my films very often they get angry and leave in the middle," he says. "When I see one of my films in the conditions in the West, I often find that the film is better than when I see it with an Iranian public, when there is so much tension and dissatisfaction." New York would have been a particularly satisfying venue. It's too bad Kiarostami couldn't get a ticket.

Q&A: 'Difficulties give me energy. The best buildings are those on difficult terrain.'

TIME: Do you agree that the censorship imposed by the regime has encouraged creativity in Iran by forcing artists to find new ways to express themselves?
Kiarostami: For me, this has been true. I've lived through difficult times and faced difficult situations. When I encounter difficulties it gives me the energy to resolve them. Resolving a problem creates an inventive energy. I have an architect friend who says that the best buildings he has designed are those on difficult terrain, because he is then forced to consider every aspect of what he is building. But limitations and restrictions should not be so great that they paralyze you.

TIME: Your films are frequently described as realist. How would you characterize your work?
Kiarostami: People's views about my films are probably more correct than my own. My main influence is real life. But no matter how realistic and true to real life you are, film is still something man-made.

TIME: What are the advantages of digital filmmaking?
Kiarostami: The freedom it provides, but freedom is not always the best solution. It also creates limitations. I like digital and there are certain films that I could only make that way, like Ten, but I won't limit myself to it.

TIME: Ten features a very articulate child. Why are children central to so many of your films?
Kiarostami: I remember my own childhood very clearly and can conjure it up very easily. I love the child's perspective and attitude — that mix of innocence and opportunism. Children have more capacity for living and are more powerful than adults in terms of their instinct for survival.

• AISHA LABI
• Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami's film is the talk of New York