Babak Payami (Iran)
A second feature from a young director who studied filmmaking in Toronto, Secret Ballot is a relentlessly naturalistic recounting of a young city woman's effort to get out the vote in a primitive desert region. In a typical incident, she seeks out a group of nomadic "voters" whose little joke, it appears, is to scratch the message "our votes are under the rock" on a huge limestone slab that has nothing underneath. Every few kilometres a different language is spoken, and local patriarchs are running self-sufficient village governments anyway. Her companion is an illiterate soldier who can't get over the fact that the elections officer is a woman. At first he obstructs her, but is gradually won over by her idealism and naive tenacity. There is, of course, no hint of sexual attraction. More than that, it is a world where the whole range of human feeling is as pale and burnt-out as the sandy tracks where the soldier's little jeep struggles along. The filmmaker may have intended to be allusive, but the result is often just a sand dune or two away from dull. - R.C.

(Sept 11, 9:45 PM, Varsity 2 and 3; Sept 12, 9:30 AM, Uptown 2)