Young people have the feeling they cannot breathe; I have always felt that. Also, they feel a longing for many things, and I wanted to show that without moralising. To achieve that, I decided to have three main characters, each with a different path and embodying different qualities. Amir is the worker, the one who struggles; Narges comes from a wealthy family that is entrenched in traditions, rules and social constraints; and Omid is more of a dreamer, an intellectual. What does this world do to these three people? Something different happens to each of them. I wanted to let young Iranian people have their say and show the world that there are other sides to Iran, too...

The sea is actually the fourth-most-important character in the film. It is a symbol of destiny. Sometimes it is our friend, sometimes our enemy. It has different faces that I wanted to show, and to achieve that, we worked with the sounds and the weather.