Untaken Paths

The Legend of a Sigh is Tahmineh Milani's strikingly feminist film which draws on the literature of Azarbayejan province. The protagonist is a female novelist who experiences the lives of four women from different social strata. The film offers a fascinating portrait of a range of Iranian women and their problems

The film is about an imaginative and lively student who transforms her immediate family and surroundings when she talks herself into writing a novel.

Bita Hokmi, the daughter of a conservative and deeply religious family, gets accepted as a graphic design major and leaves Isfahan, her hometown for Tehran and moves in with a relative of hers, a divorced woman named Sima. Bita meets Farhad, an architecture student, in the university and although Sima warns her not to date Farhad, she does so anyway ...

An alien is sent from Kakadu planet to earth for one week. He befriends a little girl Golnar and this is the beginning of their adventures.

An arrogant movie star's life drastically changes when a teenage girl shows up.

A woman trapped in an unhappy marriage: Sima, must contend with a husband so insensitive that he makes no effort to hide his various sexual indiscretions. He forces her into an even more uncomfortable situation when he asks his wife to pretend she is related to his current girlfriend in order to avoid trouble from a society that punishes unmarried couples for being together in public.

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.

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.

A couple (Golzar & Afshar) who have been bickering & fighting from day one, are contemplating divorce until by chance they both end up visiting a therapist (Pesiani) who dishes them the secrets of a good relationship. Various episodes from the couple's married life are represented as flashbacks in a lighthearted manner.

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.

Ziba and three of her prison cohorts, recently released from a Tehran prison, settle in an out of town doctor's house posing as house sitters and embark on a get rich quick scheme. They plan to mug the lecherous men who give a ride to ladies waiting at street sides for a pickup, which was- and is, to some extent, now- how some prostitutes found work back in the time in Iran. The film portrays the characters as well as the social origins of these men, and as it progresses, explores the backgrounds of these women.

A young couple try to fix their marriage troubles with the help of a psychiatrist.

Sarah is an architect who tries to figure out the best way to treat her boss.

Tahmine Milani's first film.