Shoja Azari is a filmmaker in his own right, with his own feature production on the horizon. He has been credited on several of Shirin’s fine art videos as co-writer and co-creator, and is listed as co-director on Women Without Men. In short, the two are natural collaborators, and Shoja’s creative influence combines perfectly with Shirin’s, helping to give her powerful visions and dreamscapes shape and ballast in the familiar world. As in all great relationships, each brings something that the other does not possess; and together they work with the combined gifts as though they had belonged to them all along.

Women Without Men opens in the UK and US in May.