Shirin's title sequence consists of a shot of an illustrated version of the twelfthcentury romantic epic poem Khosrow and Shirin by Nezami Ganjavi, the images dissolving in and out before us for nearly ninety seconds. The text on screen remains unchanged except for the larger words in the top centre, which credit the director and screenwriter, present the film's title, and inform us that the work is inspired by Nezami, based on the short story adaptation of it by Farideh Golbou. After the last dissolve we see the face of a woman sitting in a cinema, her features apparently lit by the screen before her – a screen we naturally cannot see – and on which her gaze appears to be trained. She glances off to her left as if to acknowledge someone sitting nearby, pops a snack in her mouth, chews, glances off again, then casts her eyes back on the screen. Behind her there is another woman watching the film, as well as an empty seat. This lasts for just over thirty seconds, before we are presented with another woman. She too is eating, chewing languidly with her mouth partly open, looking a little bored or perhaps aloof; she scratches her forehead; at one stage, she glances down at something. She gets about thirty seconds before we see another face, this time of a woman adjusting her headscarf. As she does so, the music (which started during the title sequence) quickly fades and is replaced by sound effects: water dripping; someone opening a door, and walking slowly in an echoing room. She settles back to watch, her head leaning to rest on her seat, cocked slightly to her right.

The movie continues in this fashion for the rest of its ninety-two-minute running time. We are shown face after face for varying periods; we hear the narrative develop through on-screen dialogue; we watch as the women respond to the screen and/or become distracted from it. Piecing together the story of the film they are watching from this is difficult, especially because there is no dialogue for large swathes of it, but it centres on a love triangle between the Sassanian king Khosrow Parviz, Shirin, an Armenian princess, and Farhad, a sculptor.