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...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 10, 2022

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2006

A real winner -- smart, funny, subtle, and resonant.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2002

A psychic journey deep into the very fabric of Iranian ... life.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2002

A comedy that provides serious testament to the arduous, often dreary, always imperfect work of democracy.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2002

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 6, 2002

Payami tries to raise some serious issues about Iran's electoral process, but the result is a film that's about as subtle as a party political broadcast.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2002

A beguiling, slow-moving parable about the collision of past and present on a remote seacoast in Iran.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 30, 2002

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 30, 2002

A gem, captured in the unhurried, low-key style favored by many directors of the Iranian new wave.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 29, 2002

There are some really funny moments in here.

Full Review | Aug 27, 2002

Secret Ballot is too contemplative to be really funny.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 23, 2002

In a movie full of surprises, the biggest is that Secret Ballot is a comedy, both gentle and biting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2002

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.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 16, 2002

Babak Payami's surreal, episodic road comedy holds our attention to alternating degrees, hamstrung by the flat-footedness of his two leads.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 9, 2002

Clever but slow.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 9, 2002

Will amuse and provoke adventurous adults in specialty venues.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2002

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 8, 2002

Funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 8, 2002

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.

| Aug 8, 2002