Fereshteh loses her home and her two sons after her husband's accidental death when Hadj Safdar, her stubborn and powerful father-in-law, forces her to return to her parents. She is faced with the loss of her visitation rights when Hadj plans to send his grandchildren to live in a remote town. With the help of her circle of women friends she tries to take them beyond his reach, but in a patriarchal society it is hard to find a safe haven.

A sensation when released in 1999 in Iran, Two Women charts the lives of two promising architecture students over the course of the first turbulent years of the Islamic Republic. Tahimine Milani creates this scathing portrait of those traditions - aided by official indifference - which conspire to trap women and stop them from realizing their full potential; the inclusion of frank depictions of domestic violence was hailed by many as a breakthrough in dealing with a long taboo subject.

Every time our annual international film fest hits town, I scan all the offerings, with special attention to Iranian productions. I have seen so many fascinating films from a country that, in recent years, has banned Hollywood and other films foreign to them, and yet their filmmakers, despite having to follow strict guidelines and risking censorship at every turn, produce some of the finest films in world cinema.
This documentary features interviews with several Iranian filmmakers, plus clips from a number of their best films. Among various aspects of Iranian film-making, they talk about how their reflective films differ from the Hollywood action variety, although there is such a role for Iranian film as well. What perhaps is really remarkable is how freely these producer/directors talk in a critical way about the censorship exercised in their country. The clever ways they get around it actually appear to challenge and enhance their creativity (as Duke Ellington once said, in describing how he had to compose his music to fit the talents and limitations of his band members, "It can be good to have limits"). Unusual scenarios between husbands and wives get around the rule that men and women, even when married, can't touch. Children are sometimes used to state in an allegorical or analogous fashion what could not be presented by adult characters. And the role of women is wondrously portrayed in these productions from a country that severely limits women's roles.

An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.