We had just shown in Venice the day before, she says, and we got on a plane to Toronto for the festival there. When we landed in Toronto I got a call that we had won an award – though they wouldn’t tell us which one – and that we should come back. So within twenty-four hours of leaving, we were back in Venice at the awards ceremony. It was completely crazy. As the ceremony went on, and they hadn’t called us yet, I began to think there was a mistake. There weren’t many prizes left and I couldn’t imagine that we’d won one of the top ones. Then it was down to the Gold and Silver Lions, and they called our name. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a miracle and such an honour to be recognized for this work.
     After years working in fine art photography and video, Shirin had the chance to direct her first feature, an adaptation of a controversial Persian novella by Shahrnush Parsipur set during the 1953 CIA-backed coup that reinstalled the Shah of Iran. The story recounts the lives of five women set against this socio-political backdrop (although in her film Neshat chose to focus only on four of them). Always poetic and deeply symbolic, Shirin’s style wasn’t an obvious one to develop into narrative film. I had always wanted to make a movie, she says. But I was so intimidated to work with language and dialogue. That was the scariest part for me. Fortunately I had Shoja to collaborate with, and he was incredibly important to the project. We worked together very well. She pauses for an instant and smiles. I think we only blew up at each other once, right? Shoja, who has been tapping away at his laptop, adding details to Shirin’s stories, and smoking a cherished, hand-rolled cigar, smiles back. Yes, about once, he says.