Is there much censorship in Turkey as the secular government comes under pressure from the Islamic influence?
Ceylan: To be honest, the issues I deal with in my films are not at least directly related to what’s sensitive or not sensitive in the political scene in Turkey, so therefore I’m not directly influenced by what’s going on. And I could not stop filmmaking. But in Turkey I don’t think that censorship is very bad’ it’s quite soft actually. And even the filmmakers who make political films, I think they can do whatever they want. But even if the censorship is very hard, I think that is not a problem for filmmakers, you know. In Iran, they make very beautiful films. LWLies: That’s kind of what I was thinking of. Rafi Pitts was telling us that censorship has been the making of Iranian film. Ceylan: It increases the creativity, I think. Maybe that’s the reason for the success of Iranian film. LWLies: The subtext of Three Monkeys is in a way about how through telling lies you can reach a kind of emotional truth. In a perverse way, this family, by lying to each other, are revealing a deeper hone
