The Hidden Half

A state official sets out from Tehran. His task is to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death. She is a political prisoner. When he reaches his hotel he finds a letter his wife has left him. They have been married close to twenty years, but the letter holds a life he knew nothing about. Fereshteh Samimi writes about her student years. The year is 1978 and the country is in revolution. She had come from the provinces on a scholarship. She had joined a left wing youth circle. She had escaped arrest by very little. In that period she met a man much older than herself. Roozbeh Javid ran a literary magazine. Fereshteh ends the letter with a request. She asks her husband to listen properly to the woman he is going to see. After the film opened, Tahmine Milani was arrested. The charges against her carried the possibility of a death sentence. She was released on bail after an international campaign. Niki Karimi and Mohammad Nikbin appear in the hundred and three minute film, an Iranian production finished in 2001.