All I wanted with that film was to represent the possibility that there might be normal people who are Muslim or Arab with the same fears, responsibilities, hopes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's enough of a willingness in the West to do sympathetic movies about Arab roles.
This is one of the factors that also made me very much want to make this film, apart from the fact that I loved it. If the boy hadn't been Jewish and the man hadn't been Muslim, it wouldn't have made any difference to the film. I don't think it's relevant, really.
My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.
The future of Arab films is absolutely up to Arabs and no one else. They've got the equipment, they've got the will, they've got the talent, now they just need a little bit of history behind them and a bit of cultural relaxation.
Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it's helpful. So the fact that there won't be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that'd be helpful.
It never crossed my mind to make a film about Muhammad Ali or the Queen or any of them! They just come out of the blue.
I didn't want to live in an Islamic society because I knew I wasn't going to be a first-class citizen, and I knew I was not going to be able to keep doing what I was doing as an actress.
Making a movie with people of all different ethnicity, all different skin color and different backgrounds, meant that the movie can literally play all around the world. It's not just a blanket whitewash film like most Hollywood films tend to be.
I wanted to resist in 'The Look of Silence' making a film that ends with any kind of positive hope I feel in human rights documentaries dealing with human survivors.
I made the film to bring the story of Islam, the story of 700 million of people, to the West.