Toronto. Please Vote for Me.

"After watching Please Vote for Me, the first thing I did was go online and make sure that this was a true documentary, and not a clever mockumentary," writes Ryan Stewart at Cinematical:

Apparently, everything you see and hear in this film is completely legit, which is a truly head-spinning prospect. It centers on a group of third-grade students in present-day China who undergo a simple social experiment - a democratic election in their classroom to determine who will become the classroom monitor. Instead of paying attention to this project with half an eye or treating it with easy sarcasm, as you would expect most American students to do, these Chinese students throw themselves into the election body and soul, applying to it what could almost be called life and death stakes. All seemingly without the guidance of teachers, they cook up plots to topple competing candidates, enlist fellow students as political consultants, modify their behavior around potential rivals and supporters in order to make things go their way, and exploit vulnerabilities in their opponents that you can scarcely believe a third-grader would consider.

"An entertaining look at an election for a third-grade class monitor (apparently the first such election at a Chinese school), [Please Vote for Me] turns out to be a tutorial on both the excitement and pitfalls of mass elections," writes J Robert Parks.

Posted by dwhudson at October 2, 2007 8:14 AM