"That [#Kiarostami]... now promotes this bizarre claim to be enigmatic is the most serious sign of his complete confusion...he wants to leave it to the audience to decide, which in and of itself is a bogus democratic gesture..." Dabashi, Close-Up Iranian Cinema

"While the old masters are waning in Tehran and in Cannes, the new ones are waxing in the creamiest of the Iranian puff surfaces, the United States." -Hamid Dabashi, Close-Up Iranian Cinema

"The result... is a colossal correspondence between the large but empty egos of constitutionally inorganic intellectuals and their ideological wet-dreaming, yielding, as they must, to post-ideological organic visionaries..." Hamid Dabashi, Close-Up Iranian Cinema

"These varied and conflicting stories...may be due both to a dearth of verified information about him or to the general disinterest of premodern Iranians in scientific and historical precision." -Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 1

"The status of these [gorier, bloodier] films ... would seem to point to their predominantly male audience, who have often claimed that work and school obligations make cinema-going impossible." - Pedram Partovi, Girls' Dormitory: Woman's Islam and Iranian Horror