A tragic metaphor. While not a typical romance, the protagonist’s obsessive love for his cow (and subsequent madness when she dies) is a raw, unsettling look at monomaniacal devotion. It is a parable about what happens when the object of your love is taken away.

If you like dialogue-light, action-heavy romance, Iranian cinema is not for you. Persian love stories live in the subtext. A ten minute scene of a couple driving through the snow in silence is not boring; it is a battlefield of unspoken regrets. The most powerful "I love you" in Iranian history might be a character saying, "The traffic is heavy today."

: Known for his "Koker Trilogy," Kiarostami often blended fiction and reality. His film Through the Olive Trees (1994) is a masterpiece of persistent, quiet pursuit, following a young man’s attempt to win over a woman during a film shoot.

The existential romance (with life)

– This Oscar-winning masterpiece by Asghar Farhadi is perhaps the greatest film ever made about divorce. It explores the breakdown of a marriage through a lens of class, religion, and the moral dilemmas of modern life in Tehran.