Director Tells of Prison Ordeal

Tamineh Milani, the Iranian director of “Two Women,” who recently served seven days in prison on shadowy, unsubstantiated charges, says she still does not know the outcome of her controversial case. She believes she has become a pawn in the ongoing struggle between the liberalizing policies of President Mohammed Khatami and powerful right-wing fundamentalist forces.

Her new film “The Hidden Half,” which is currently playing in Los Angeles, just won a top prize at the recently completed Cairo International Film Festival. The film dramatizes events in Iran in 1980, the year after the Islamic revolution. The hitherto taboo subject touched a raw nerve in Iran.

At that time, in their drive to make the universities Islamic, fundamentalist forces tried to get rid of all opposition by imprisoning people thought to be dissidents, and executing some. Other opponents of the new regime fled the country.

That situation comes into public focus for the first time in the film. A wife played by Niki Karimi--she won the best actress award at the Cairo festival--appeals to her husband, a judge, to dig deeply into the case of a woman he is about to try, by telling him about her own youthful past. She confesses to her activism against the shah during college and her attraction to a married intellectual with a wandering eye, played by Mohammad Nikbin (Milani’s husband).

In an interview here, Milani talked for the first time about her arrest. Her husband, who is an architect, translated while she listened closely with occasional passionate interruptions. When the conversation seemed to get very serious, their frisky 5-year-old daughter, Gina, cuddled up to her mother. When Milani was arrested, Gina was told she had gone to a film festival in London, but after three days she seemed to understand what was going on and insisted on being with her father all the time.

Oddly enough, Milani’s problems started one month after “The Hidden Half” was shown in Tehran theaters and continued to be screened even after she was in prison. Late in August, four men went to the couple’s office looking for her and then proceeded to their home, confiscating handwritten notes and scripts.

According to Milani, they told her, “We have permission to arrest you”; after 15 minutes, they took her, accompanied by her husband, to the revolutionary court, which is under the control of fundamentalists. Ordinarily, it would have been possible to post a bond and leave, but the judge wasn’t there so they couldn’t release her. She was taken to a single cell and for several days was not allowed to mingle with other women prisoners. When they met her, they rallied to her defense, giving her fresh clothing, volunteering their shower time for her--and suggesting she make a film about their plight.

“Every day for five hours, I was questioned [by the court] about my movie,” Milani said. “I was accused of doing things against national security and collaborating with anti-revolutionary groups outside of Iran. It is one of the highest accusations they can make, and the sentence is the death penalty.”

After the judge saw the film, he realized there was nothing against Islamic fundamentalist law in it, but speculation grew that her case was being used to discredit the Ministry of Culture and Guidance (known as the Ershad) which had licensed “The Hidden Half,” and to intimidate other independent directors. The rumor was that some unsuccessful filmmakers with powerful connections were responsible for making life difficult for filmmakers such as Milani and Jafar Panahi, whose film “The Circle” dealt with women who had just gotten out of prison. (“The Circle” was released in the U.S. earlier in the year.)

Meanwhile, Nikbin did not go to the press with the story because the deputy minister of Ershad was working to get Milani released. At the same time, concern was rising at the Montreal and Venice festivals about Milani’s fate, petitions were being circulated in her support and questions about the case were being raised in the press.

At two press conferences, Khatami said he had checked with the information ministry and was told she had no record of anything subversive in her background. He said he knew her personally, that she was a very good citizen and he was amazed at her arrest.

Later, the Ershad minister Masjed Jamee appealed to Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leadership, who ordered her immediate release.

“We were extremely worried,” Nikbin said. “The court had charges and accusations but didn’t have any documentation. Two hours after she was released from prison, two groups came from the judiciary office. One came to our home and took whatever they wanted and another group of five started searching our office again. They took pictures, videotapes, handwritten notes, film books and scenarios.”

Following Milani’s release, she and her husband tried to get the case closed and their belongings returned. “They have not given us a direct answer about when we’ll get them back or what’s going to happen,” Nikbin said. Knowing she was dealing with a controversial subject, Milani said she wanted to make “The Hidden Half” because she thought it would be in line with Khatami’s proposals to start a dialogue on the past in order to renew the country.

“We need to see what happened to those people [dissidents] the year after the revolution,” Milani said. “I was in my first year of architectural school. There were many ideologies wanting to get rid of the shah and have a democratic system, and it ended up with the Islamic republic. How can we judge a teenager then who emotionally wanted to do something for the country and may have been attracted to a left-wing group? Many people left the country at that time for various reasons. Some wanted to become engineers or doctors, and now they are nothing. This is the story of their lives. They’d love to come back to Iran, but they can’t.”

In Iran, the film has been watched by audiences with extraordinarily intense silence, followed by tears after the screenings and thanks to Milani for opening up the subject, Nikbin said.

“Until we get rid of the anger some people feel from those days and release that negative energy first, we can’t really be united,” he said.