Abbas Kiarostami (The Taste of Cherry, 10) is one of the most important, ambitious and rewarding filmmakers at work today. His new film Shirin, a retelling of a classic Persian love story, offers a feast for the imagination of a wholly unexpected kind.An audience of more than 100 women are deeply absorbed in watching a film we never see. This film-within-the-film is a story of star-crossed love as well known in modern-day Iran as Romeo and Juliet is in the West. Shirin, a beautiful Armenian princess, falls madly in love with a portrait of Khosrow, a young Persian prince, and sets out on horseback to find him, unaware that he has already gone in search of her…