Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

Payami's gentle comedy captures a subtle range of human feelings through a quietly inventive visual style that embodies the best life-affirming tendencies of modern Iranian film.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker

Secret Ballot is an education hiding in a comedy, a parablelike portrait of the irresistible forces of modernization and democracy meeting the immovable inertia of tradition, culture and power relations written in the blood of the past.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

A finely crafted entertainment that works better than most current Hollywood movies.

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

Secret Ballot, which has a rich, spare score by Michael Galasso that blends Eastern and Western motifs, is funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste.

Washington Post by Ann Hornaday

As much as any earnest historical drama, Secret Ballot serves as an eloquent argument for civic life, showing its human elements to be no less flawed for being so necessary.

L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor

Payami uses an exquisitely delicate juxtaposition of long shots and close-ups, mobility and stillness, music and found sound, comedy and pathos to suggest both the longing for self-expression and communication, and its limits in a repressive society.

Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten

A real winner -- smart, funny, subtle, and resonant -- and there's not a hanging chad in sight.

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

Yet another film from Iran that has the leisurely pace, sly humor and incontrovertible wisdom of a Sufi parable.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

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.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

A psychic journey deep into the very fabric of Iranian (and by extension, all) life.

Miami Herald by Marta Barber

Secret of this 'Ballot' lies in its humor, charm and universality.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Payami has a visual style that is sometimes astonishing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes both.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Ray Conlogue

A beguiling, slow-moving parable.

New York Post by Jonathan Foreman

With its endless takes of characters silently waiting, say, or getting out of bed, this is the kind of film that can be seen only after a full night's sleep. But it is also clever, funny and sometimes moving.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Pleasing low-key comedy.

The New York Times by Dave Kehr

A very minor contribution to the great corpus of Iranian cinema that has emerged in the last 20 years.