Secret Ballot
This comedy follows a determined female election official (Nassim Abdi) and the grumpy soldier (Cyrus Abidi) assigned to escort her as she tries to collect votes on a remote Iranian island. The soldier, one of two assigned to stand guard on the island, is aghast at the thought of a woman giving him orders, and complains constantly. She is just as stubborn in her determination to wring every vote out of an island inhabited almost entirely by illiterate shepherds and smugglers who would rather that the government not even know that they exist at all. Director Babak Payami's film is an extended battle of the sexes that takes a few digs at the Iranian political process along the way.
Director: Babak Payami
Starring: Nassim Abdi, Cyrus Abidi, Youssef Habashi, Farrokh Shojaii, Gholbahar Janghali
Payami's gentle comedy captures a subtle range of human feelings through a quietly inventive visual style that embodies the best life-affirming tendencies of modern Iranian film.
Secret Ballot, which has a rich, spare score by Michael Galasso that blends Eastern and Western motifs, is funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste.
As much as any earnest historical drama, Secret Ballot serves as an eloquent argument for civic life, showing its human elements to be no less flawed for being so necessary.
Charms with its amalgam of absurdity, optimism, humor, and avuncular regard for the million small daily chores, rituals, suspicions, and courtesies of dwellers on even the sparsest spots on earth.
A psychic journey deep into the very fabric of Iranian (and by extension, all) life.
Babak Payami
London Film Festival (2001)
Best Feature Film
Newport International Film Festival (2002)
Democracy
Political Film Society (2003)
Babak Payami
Rotterdam International Film Festival (2002)
Babak Payami
São Paulo International Film Festival (2001)
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