Films A-Z
Letters to the President
Letters to the President
Petr Lom / Canada / 2008 / 73 min.
Millions of Iranians write letters every day to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which they ask him to sort out their straitened personal circumstances. Most of them believe that they will rapidly receive help and they have blind faith in the head of state. This confidence is sustained by occasional positive responses from the President, who sends a chador to an eight-year-old girl or gives some of the families a few rial out of his own pocket. Nevertheless, the overall majority of the letters in which people ask for financial loans to survive end up in the hands of clerks, who simply fill out a form and instead of taking specific action provide solace in the form of empty words. The people's anger however is not directed at their adored president, but at regional authorities in Iran and at Israel and the USA further afield. This documentary by Petr Lom, a Canadian director of Czech origin, illustrates in absurd detail the populism of the current Iranian president, who will be seeking re-election this year. Can he succeed in winning when, instead of systematic policies and measures, he stakes everything on appealing, but unrealised and unrealisable personal assistance?