President Mir Qanbar

Mir Qanbar is a retired Iranian official from the Turkish-language province of Azerbaijan, far from the capital Teheran. He is taking part in the presidential elections and campaign, and not for the first time: he has tried to get into Parliament five times before and on three previous occasions to become president, but was disqualified on all manner of grounds. His campaign team is made up of one staff member, the disabled Seifollah, who has been promised a position as Minister of Health. The means available to Mir Qanbar and Seifollah on their campaign are a donkey, pamphlets and a megaphone, with which they travel from village to village. Mir Qanbar is a poor villager, so he understands better than anyone what the people need: this in essence is his message. But in order to help the people, he must first be accepted as a candidate. Could the documentary makers possibly organise the necessary audition with (now former) President Khatami? Like Shirvani’s feature début Navel, which was stylistically almost its opposite, President Mir Qanbar was supported by the Hubert Bals Fund. The result is a humane and humorous portrait of a Don Quichote (and his Sancho Panchez), that above all paints a sensitive picture of everyday village life in Iran. In this sense, it is more a film about the electorate than about the politicians. (GT)

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