Directed by Babak Payami
Starring Maryam Moghaddam, Kamal Naroui
Screenings: 3/4/o4 1:00 pm at San Jose Rep, 3/5/04 5:15pm and 3/7/04 9:15pm at SJSU University Theater

“The Silence Between Two Thoughts” was inspired in part by the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Director Payami has created a beautiful, austere film. The negatives were confiscated by the Iranian authorities before the film was completed, and this version was painstakingly recreated from computer tapes by the exiled director.
It’s difficult to describe this movie, where so little happens but everything is important. In a remote, nameless village the execution of a young woman is halted on the orders of the fundamentalist Haji. She has been discovered to be a virgin, and if a virgin is executed she will go to heaven, but convicts must go to hell. The Haji orders the executioner to marry her and deal with the obstacle to carrying out justice.
The executioner, who is in many ways a good man led astray by the Haji, who has maniuplated everyone’s religious beliefs, is torn between caring for the girl as another human being and seeing her only as another person to execute. As things in the village begin to disintegrate, the villagers must face up to what they have allowed the Haji to do to their people.