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SECRET
BALLOT
AN
ELECTRIFYING SURREAL COMEDY BRINGS DEMOCRACY LESSONS
The
Brazilian viewer can consider him/herself privileged for
having opportunities like this one in the theaters. As good
as it is, co-produced by Italy, best screenplay and direction
awards at the last Venice Festival, highlight at the 25th
São Paulo International Film Festival, having received
the jury's special award, "Secret Ballot" gets
little visibility in other countries, including Iran, location,
theme and inspiration of this more than fundamental film
directed by Babak Payami, Iranian exiled with a Canadian
citizenship.
"Secret
Ballot" is the result of a nice formula of films subvention
by the cultural branch 'Fabrica' of the Italian Benetton.
The same 'Fabrica', directed by Marco Müller (ex-director
of the Locarno Festival) and member of the jury at the 24th
São Paulo IFF, who also co-produced "Bicho de
Sete Cabeças", by Laís Bodanski. Outside
Italy and Brazil (where it opens this Friday 10/05) Payami's
film will be distributed, according to an inform by the
distributor Celluloid Dreams, in Spain, Norway, Great Britain,
Switzerland, Greece and, that's all for the moment.
It
is one of the best essays ever shot about pre-democracy.
Almost surreal, almost a comedy, "Secret Ballot"
kind of excuses itself for introducing a voting ballot in
the middle of a hostile landscape. The damages of the theocratic
dogma of the mullahs in Iran left their traits in the behavior
of the people, who receive the voting agent with distrust.
"I vote for God", says an old man who distrusts
the need of voting. "Write there that my wives and
I have only one candidate", says another one.
The
screenplay had the participation of the brilliant Mohsen
Makhmalbaf, even though the panoramic action and the long
metaphoric journeys on a road lost in time are very close
to the dialectics of the films by the Iranian master Abbas
Kiarostami. The result is amazingly new, in a time when
even civilization examples such as France show that they
can also vote scarily bad.
Besides
the voting agent, only another character, an innocent border
soldier, on a desert beach, allows the simple and deep resources
for the building of unforgettable dialogues in the movie.
All around, together with the dangers disguised as democratic
acts, there is romance, the soldier and the agent get close,
what is a taboo in the theocratic Iranian society. Not only
in its magnificent and always remarkable cinema.
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O
espectador brasileiro pode se considerar um privilegiado por ter
oportunidades como esta em seus cinemas. Por melhor que seja,
co-produzido com a Itália, prêmio de melhor roteiro
e direção no último festival de Veneza, destaque
na 
