Having followed the failure of the Arab spring, and with his own Iranian experiences in mind, Makhmalbaf thought a lot about ordinary people’s role in dictatorships when making The President. “Look at Syria now,” he says. “President Bashar al-Assad is a bad guy, but are the revolutionaries good? No, some are even worse than him. It’s the same situation with Gaddafi: he was bad but look at the anarchists in power now. In films, dictators are often depicted as bad guys while the people are only seen as oppressed. I wanted to show that the people share the blame, too, because they’re silent. The history of dictatorship is the history of people’s silence. It’s often not dictatorship of power – it’s dictatorship of fear.”
