Shirin

One of Kiarostami's most daring formal experiments turns the camera on the audience. Set entirely in a movie theater showing an adaptation of a twelfth-century poem by Nezami Ganjavi (which is never actually seen but is heard throughout)‚ Shirin surveys in a succession of close-ups the reactions of those raptly watching the tragic love story unfold: an audience made up of more than 110 actresses, including Juliette Binoche (who would later star in Kiarostami's 2010 film Certified Copy). The result is a masterful study of spectatorship and the affective power of cinema.