Daily Inspiration Quote by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

A throwaway “also” does a lot of damage here. Makhmalbaf isn’t offering a neutral observation about production slates; he’s indicting the global imagination for its selective eyesight. The line reads like an afterthought, but it lands as an accusation: even when Afghanistan dominates headlines, it rarely earns the sustained, messy, human attention that cinema can provide. News cycles give you spectacle. Films, at their best, give you consequence. The absence matters.

The phrasing is pointedly passive: “there are no films being made,” not “we aren’t making films.” That grammatical dodge mirrors the system he’s criticizing: responsibility gets dispersed across markets, censors, funders, festival gatekeepers, visa regimes, safety risks, and the quiet prejudice that some lives are “too complicated” or “too dangerous” to render with intimacy. Afghanistan becomes a setting for other people’s stories - spy thrillers, war dramas, moral lessons - rather than a place with authors, contradictions, and everyday texture.

Coming from an Iranian director whose work has long wrestled with censorship, post-revolutionary identity, and the ethics of representation, the line doubles as self-implication. It’s not just “the West” failing; it’s the regional cultural sphere, too, and the international art world that loves political symbolism but balks at long-term commitment.

The intent is strategic: shame the audience into noticing a void, then make that void feel like a moral choice. The subtext is blunt: if no one films Afghanistan, it’s easier to forget it - and easier to repeat whatever we want about it.