Sweet and low: Babak Payami

The director of 'Secret bBallot', chooses his best and worst scenes of all time

Best scene

Zorba the Greek (Michael Cacoyannnis, 1964)

Zorba and the writer are walking down a path when they pass the house of an attractive widow who's adored by the writer and to whom he's lent his umbrella, which Zorba says is the perfect excuse to visit. The writer is reluctant, saying he's not looking for trouble. Zorba says, "Life is trouble, only death is not. To be alive is to look for trouble." When things get difficult – which is often when I'm making films in Tehran – I ask myself, am I looking for trouble? Then I remember Zorba's words, and this keeps me going. From a professional standpoint, I find the text incredibly rich and I think it's one of the best pieces of writing. I think it's a very valuable film.

Worst scene

One More Day (Babak Payami, 1999)

The film's set in a repressed society where men and women are segregated, and in this scene a bus breaks down and there's interaction between a man and woman. However, the bus actually did break down whilst filming so I wasn't able to complete the scene in the way I'd had in mind. There's a close-up of the man picking up a ball of thread dropped by a woman, but I couldn't film the results of his forbidden action. I'd wanted to show him being taken away and beaten because he'd encroached on the women's section. I think the scene worked anyway, but it didn't have the same emotional, thematic and social charge.