During 27th Annual Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) 2009
A film by Naghi Nemati
Iran, 2007 (80 minutes)
Language: Farsi English Sub-Titles
Every year nearly 10 million Iranians place their last hope in a nondescript building in Teheran: this is where they send their letters to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and where these letters are read, considered, and answered. The film allows everyone to have their say – those who contradict themselves three times in a single sentence, those who, out of fear, say nothing at great length, and those who openly say what they think. From the restrained editing emerges a snapshot of a country in which people are worried – about the cost of food, the Americans, the power supply, the way to paradise, whether the world realizes that Islam stands for justice, and about the new jewelry regulations manipulation, all part of one and the same system.
Self-taught filmmaker, former academic at Harvard, 40-year-old Peter Lom (HYPERLINK "http://www.onatightrope.org/"On a Tightrope, 2007) was allowed to accompany the president on several countryside trips (the only foreigner given such access, "with luck and persistence," he says.) This closed curtain of a film, "though only a glimpse", is one of the most revealing we have shown in the history of the festival about ordinary Iranians.
Letters to the President was lauded at February's Berlin FF as one of the best documentaries there.
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