“"I started as a writer, writing short stories, before I did anything with movies, and I was very inspired by surrealism and magical realism—especially the South American writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar. And the reason was that, growing up in Iran, reality is a bit jelly-like. It’s not solid. It can change, it’s opaque, it’s very tricky, and sometimes it’s so strange and weird that you just can’t believe. So the idea that there is a fantastical element within your everyday life and it’s not a dragon flying by, that is very easy for me to grasp. And that’s what we tried to do with _Border_."”