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Secret Ballot
Directed by
Babak Payami
G
2002
1h 45m
Comedy
,
Drama
6.7
83%
64%
5.9
Add to Watchlist
A female election agent and a gun-toting soldier try to collect votes among the local islanders with mixed success.
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Where to Watch Secret Ballot
Amazon Video
Buy $12.99
Apple TV
Buy $12.99
Fandango At Home
Buy $12.99
Cast of Secret Ballot
Nassim Abdi
girl
Cyrus Abidi
Soldier
Youssef Habashi
Farrokh Shoja
Gholbahar Janghali
Babak Payami
Director / Writer
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Idea
Secret Ballot Ratings & Reviews
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
I see Payami as creating a formal relationship between his audience and subject that encourages us to be open-minded: neither of the two main characters can be seen as all right or all wrong...
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
A real winner -- smart, funny, subtle, and resonant.
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A psychic journey deep into the very fabric of Iranian ... life.
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
A comedy that provides serious testament to the arduous, often dreary, always imperfect work of democracy.
Boston Globe
Janice Page
The filmmaker's greatest achievement is that he avoids preaching or taking sides and deftly proves that the weightiest issues can still come tinged with humor and irony.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
There has been much puzzlement among critics about what the election symbolizes. I believe the message is in the messenger: The agent is a woman.
Chicago Tribune
Patrick Z. McGavin
A gem, captured in the unhurried, low-key style favored by many directors of the Iranian new wave.
Ebert & Roeper
Richard Roeper
There are some really funny moments in here.
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Secret Ballot is too contemplative to be really funny.
Seattle Times
Moira MacDonald
In a movie full of surprises, the biggest is that Secret Ballot is a comedy, both gentle and biting.
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Secret Ballot 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.
Newsday
Jan Stuart
Babak Payami's surreal, episodic road comedy holds our attention to alternating degrees, hamstrung by the flat-footedness of his two leads.
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Clever but slow.
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Will amuse and provoke adventurous adults in specialty venues.
New York Times
Dave Kehr
There are a few stabs at absurdist comedy ... but mostly the humor is of the sweet, gentle and occasionally cloying kind that has become an Iranian specialty.
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
Funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste.
Observer
Andrew Sarris
Some of the longest takes in the history of cinema, and a precious bit of ethnographic essence for moviegoers who can appreciate political irony for its own sake.
L.A. Weekly
Ella Taylor
Payami uses an exquisitely delicate juxtaposition of long shots and close-ups, mobility and stillness, music and found sound, comedy and pathos to suggest both the longing for self-expression and communication, and its limits in a repressive society.
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Methodical, measured, and gently tedious in its comedy, Secret Ballot is a purposefully reductive movie -- which may be why it's so successful at lodging itself in the brain.
AV Club
Scott Tobias
Payami stretches the tired conventions of a mismatched road movie into a quietly progressive look at women's rights and the mixed values of representative government.
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