Star Review
It’s election day on a remote island. The region’s electoral agent, a young woman, arrives by boat to spend the next few hours collating the islanders’ votes. To guard the box, she’s assigned a soldier who’s much less enthusiastic about the democratic process than his unlikely partner.
We’ve been fortunate indeed in the last few years to be an audience to an abundance of highly accomplished Iranian cinema, but there have been very few films amongst the crop one could envisage inspiring European or English-language remakes. Spielberg wasn’t tempted by the malfunctioning
technology of The Wind Will Carry Us, John Milius is unlikely to be scripting an Americanisation of Kandahar any time soon, and we’re never going to see Penny Marshall’s version of The Circle. Secret Ballot, however, is a slightly different proposition, stocked as it is with familiar Western tropes: it’s a road movie, political satire and mismatched couple comedy all at once, and there’s even what you might call a happy ending.
Co-funded by several European organisations, this is a much less forbiddingly austere film than many of its predecessors: there’s an unobtrusive musical score, and writer-director Babak Payami, working from an
idea by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, gives the feature a more rounded, better developed sense of humour than the slightly hesitant attempts at sight gags and surrealism in Kandahar or The Day I Became A Woman. It is, ultimately, a
very enjoyable take on the old idea that a single vote can make all the difference. The soldier’s motto is "nothing ever happens on time", but Payami makes highly involving the slow process of democracy, and what happens when absolutely everyone has to have their say.
Mike McCahill on 3rd January 2003
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Film Description
Payami's skilful blend of road movie, political satire and bickering couple comedy is one of the most accessible Iranian films we've seen to date, as a young electoral agent is (mis)matched with a disgruntled soldier to tour a remote island collecting the residents' votes.
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