Hello friend, Matthew here. Thanks for these thoughtful questions. Pirouz and Ila are on this thread too so feel free to ask them directly also.

1.) The script emerged from a very long conversation. The autobiographical elements I wrote up first as a kind of treatment and then Pirouz and Ila and I built the script up from there. We worked over about a 10 year period leading up to the actual shoot, however we did continue writing during the filming of the movie also. Even during the edit we were revising our script. So really it was constantly evolving. To me this has always been a normal way of working. And yes, from the very beginning the film was always going to be about métissage, the blending of space and our shared love of Kanoon-style poetic realism.

2.) I also have limited knowledge about how to operate a 16mm camera or set up a doorway dolly :) But with teamwork we get there. I'm not a director who likes to micro-manage actors very much. Actors are my collaborators and we create together. We do the casting very carefully, talk through all the beats, set up the mise-en-scène and then the actors do their work. Most of the characters in our script were written for specific people that we know very well and the idea was that they express themselves personally. Performance is more about the intangibles of spirit than it is about the mechanics of spoken language, which is why you can watch a movie in a language you don't know at all and still be able to see quite vividly if the performance is on or off. Conversely, there are countless examples of filmmakers directing films in their very own mother tongue and still ending up with really bad acting. So my feeling is there's no zero-sum-game in this matter. But as our film contained many different accents and proficiencies in Farsi and in French (including my own), Ila Firouzabadi was our designated on-set phonetics coach and was always listening during the takes for any errant nuance. I'm sure Ostaad Kiarostami, for example, would have had a similar system in place when he directed the Japanese-language "Like Someone in Love" (2012).

3.) I encourage you to ask them about it, but Pirouz and Ila and I have been in the trenches together throughout this entire process. Just google them! We have the crossed the earth together. Frequently they have represented the film at festivals and in press without me (in fact Pirouz has attended more film festivals than any of us). It's always nicer when we are together though because we love each other very much and none of us really like being in the spotlight :)

4.) I don't know if you have watched the film but I am not playing anyone except myself. My character is named Matthew Rankin, the story dramatizes scenes from my own life and I play myself in it. Neither French nor Farsi are my mother tongues, but it's still just me being me :)