Shirin (2008) poster
2008 · drama · iranian

Shirin

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami1h 32m2008
ElsewhereIMDb6.73kRT80%TMDB6.237
  • sombre
  • slow-burn
  • surreal
  • signature
Movie DNA

Sombre, slow-burn, gentle drama / iranian, surreal in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

A hundred and fourteen famous Iranian theater and cinema actresses and a French star: mute spectators at a theatrical representation of Khosrow and Shirin, a Persian poem from the twelfth century, put on stage by Kiarostami. The development of the text -- long a favorite in Persia and the Middle East -- remains invisible to the viewer of the film, the whole story is told by the faces of the women watching the show.

Our read · Shirin (2008) reads as a sombre, slow-burn, surreal drama · iranian entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Shirin

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a radical experiment watching women's faces react to an unseen tragic poem.

ends bittersweetit stays with youmeditativegrips from the openattention 5/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip tonight if you need visible plot, action, or conventional storytelling.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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