And award-winning Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has died. He was one of the most significant figures in a new wave of Iranian cinema that emerged following the 1979 revolution. In 1997, he won the top prize at Cannes for his film “Taste of Cherry.” This is Kiarostami speaking in 1997.

Abbas Kiarostami: “I think even if we have censorship in Iran, we should deal with it ourselves. As my father used to say, if your head breaks, it better break in your own hat. We shouldn’t talk about it anywhere else, because there’s no advantage in it. Nobody can untie our knots or solve our problems. For that reason, I never speak about censorship outside of Iran, especially for foreign reporters. Often I ask them, ’Don’t you have your own censorship?’”

Abbas Kiarostami died on Monday of cancer at the age of 76.