IRANIAN director Tahimeh Milani’s film “Hidden Half” is among the favourites to take first prize in the Cairo film festival, critics said this week. The woman director’s latest work has been widely applauded and won high praise in Arab newspapers after its screening in the festival which opened on October 9, said Jordanian reviewer Najeh Hassan. The awards will be made on Saturday. Eighteen films are in competition, while the 25th annual festival is showing a total of 167 productions from 44 countries. Milani was arrested in Iran at the end of August before being released in early September. The Iranian daily paper, Hambasteghi, said the film was considered insulting to the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution in her country. It portrays the memories of a married woman in love with a rebel from a counter-revolutionary group during the early years of the Islamic republic. – AFP