Widely regarded as one of the most important and ambitious filmmakers working today, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami continues to explore the potential of cinema, stimulating and challenging the viewer's imagination to an extraordinary degree. His most recent film, Shirin is a re-telling of a classic Persian love story.

What Shirin shows us – and indeed all it shows us – is an audience of more than 100 women who are deeply absorbed in watching a film we never see. We observe instead how the drama plays out on the faces of the audience, seen in close-up, mostly one at a time, illuminated by the flickering light of the screen. It is a mesmerising series of portraits of women young and old, many of them strikingly beautiful, their expressions variously wistful, quizzical, amused, enraptured and distraught. Also helping us to reconstruct the tale for ourselves are the unseen film's impassioned narration, dramatic dialogue, romantic, doom-laden score, and richly evocative sound effects.

Although Shirin creates a strong illusion of real women watching a real film, the audience is in fact made up of well-known Iranian actresses (plus Juliette Binoche who happened to be there when filming was taking place and who will star in Kiarostami's next film). Reportedly, the entire film was shot in Kiarostami's living room, with the women looking only at a blank screen while imagining their own love stories, and the Shirin narration was decided upon only after Kiarostami had finished filming.

Following its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and its nationwide theatrical release by the BFI in June 2009, Abbas Kiarostami's Shirin is to released on UK DVD on 26th October 2009 by the BFI at the RRP of £19.99. The picture is 1.78:1 anamorphic, the film in Farsi with optional English subtitles, and the following extras are included:

• Taste of Shirin (2008) – Hamideh Razavi's documentary on the making of Shirin .
• Illustrated booklet containing essays and credits.