Daily Inspiration Quote by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

“Complex” here isn’t just a descriptor; it’s a rebuke. Makhmalbaf, speaking as a filmmaker who has long treated Afghanistan as more than a geopolitical backdrop, is pushing back against the lazy clarity the outside world demands: heroes and villains, tribes and terrorists, liberation and failure. By insisting on complexity twice, he turns the word into a shield against simplification and a quiet accusation about who benefits when Afghanistan stays “unknown.”

The subtext is that ignorance isn’t accidental. “Unknown” sounds passive, but he pairs it with a reason that flatters the subject (rich, layered culture) while implicating the viewer (unwilling to do the work). In Western media and policy narratives, Afghanistan is often rendered legible only when it fits a crisis template. Complexity becomes inconvenient, so it’s edited out - in news cycles, in war messaging, even in well-meaning humanitarian storytelling. Makhmalbaf’s line suggests that the country’s opacity is partly produced by the outsider’s demand for a single story.

As a director, his intent is also medium-specific: cinema can hold contradictions without resolving them. Where policy memos need conclusions, films can linger in ambiguity - in women’s lives, regional differences, languages, class, faith, history. The quote reads like an argument for attention as an ethical act. If Afghanistan remains “unknown,” it’s not because it lacks a culture the world can understand; it’s because understanding would require slowing down, accepting messiness, and letting Afghans be more complicated than the roles assigned to them.