PRESS CONFERENCE
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI
This year, in the framework of the 43rd International Thessaloniki Film Festival, New Horizons welcomes an old friend, the distinguished Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami. In the press conference today, the director of the New Horizons section, Dimitri Eipides, spoke about the section's longstanding relationship with Iranian cinema and Abbas Kiarostami in particular: "I feel proud to have gained the attention of a leading and renowned director such as Abbas Kiarostami. We met 10 years ago. This is his fourth visit to Thessaloniki and he assures us he'll be back again. Now we can refer to our relationship as a friendship. The audience has repeatedly expressed its admiration, it respects his work and this becomes more and more evident in each of his film's screenings".

About "10"
Abbas Kiarostami spoke about his film 10 which is being shown at the 43rd International Thessaloniki Film Festival and explained how he brings out a different form in each of his films: "In order to be original and genuine, you must always start out something as if is was your first time. You urge yourself to pick new topics while using the experience you've accumulated in the past. 10 wasn't originally planned this way but the film's subject geared it towards the way it is. It's about a psychoanalyst who sees her patients in a car. It took about a year to render the screenplay. I had many ideas to add to it but I had to adapt them to the psychoanalyst-patient relationship. I used a digital camera mounted on the car's hood. The film couldn't be done using a normal camera. I've shot five films with a digital camera. In all of them except 10, it's just me and the camera. I think that the low cost involved in using digital cameras can help young filmmakers. In the long run, it will be approved even by those that oppose it".

Censorship in Iran
However, Abbas Kiarostami's 10 faces censorship problems in Iran. As he noted, "They're asking me to cut about 40% of the film. Perhaps I should rename the film from 10 to 6. They want me to remove the prostitution scenes, the scene where a woman cuts her hair, as well as the scenes where a boy talks back to his mother, saying that children should always respect their parents. With this kind of censorship the film is useless, it makes no sense".
"Of course I was happy to begin shooting the film. It was hard, though, to imagine the outcome. I had already spoken to the actors and crew and asked them to keep quiet about the film until we were finished so we could have a complete estimation and see what the movie had to say, if anything. Although I usually keep the audience in mind, this time I thought of no one while shooting the film. There are certain deficiencies in Iranian law that we take advantage of to show our films. "Worse" films than 10 have been released this way".
The film deals with women's problems in Iran's society. The director explained what took him so long to deal with this matter: "Better late than never. It's a depiction of real problems in our society. I don't belong to the group of people that discriminates between the genders, but I think that I simply expose problems at their source".

About his actors
In reference to his cast, the director said: "I basically ask them to be themselves. I'm the one who has to change in order to get closer with them and find some common ground. This way, the director and the actors can collaborate smoothly".
Actress Mania Akbari and the young star of the film, Amin Maher attended the press conference. "I'm not really as bad as I look in the film. I love my mother. I feel burdened by the role but it's a part of cinema", he said.

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