The Hidden half = Nimeh-ye penhan [DVD]

The dutiful wife of an Iranian judge uses her husband’s impending case of a woman facing execution for an unspecified crime to reveal the truth of her past revolutionary activities and to illustrate that the stories of people must be heard before passing judgement. Using the device of a diary and an extended flashback, Fereshteh (Niki Karima, Best Actress, Cairo International Film Festival) explains how her life changed drastically when she went to university, joined the Communist party, then fell in love with a married man. Feminist director Tahmineh Milani was imprisoned by the Islamic Revolutionary Court following the film’s release and is on parole; the film was also pulled from Tehran screens after a month but later returned. Melodramatic at times, the film’s history overshadows its content yet still manages to convey the oppression of Iranian women under an Islamic regime in pre and post revolutionary Iran. In Farsi with English subtitles. Please note: the white subtitles are sometimes hard to read on screen.