Letters to the President (2009)

Directed by: Petr Lom | 72 minutes| documentary | Actors: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to a second term as president of Iran in June 2009. His re-election was controversial. Supporters of Ahmadinejad’s main rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, accused the incumbent president of massive ballot box fraud. Mousavi did not accept the result (Ahmadinejad would have received almost 63 percent of the vote) and demanded a recount. In the days following the election, hundreds of thousands of people across Iran took to the streets to protest against Ahmadinejad’s re-election proceedings. Some of these protests have been brutally crushed, which have also resulted in deaths. In the west, the re-election of the ultra-conservative Ahmadinejad was viewed with dismay. He is a strict follower of religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his ideal is to bring Iran back to the principles of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. According to analysts, it is mainly the poorer, religious population groups who voted for Ahmadinejad.

This image is underlined in the documentary ‘Letters to the President’ (2009) by the Canadian-Czech filmmaker Petr Lom. The populist Ahmadinejad is followed during his work as president. The film offers a fascinating look at how the Iranian people are being misled. A large proportion of Iranians live in poverty, inflation in the Islamic country is sky-high, as are unemployment rates. In some villages there is not even water or electricity available. In short, there is dissatisfaction everywhere. Many people turn to the president in hopes that he can help them. Ahmadinejad therefore calls on the population to write him letters explaining their problem. He promises them to do his best to solve it. Lom starts his documentary with people claiming that everything is going well because the president is helping them build their lives. Everyone seems to know ‘someone’ who has received an answer to his letter. Some have even received money. But Petr Lom didn’t manage to get any of those lucky few in front of his camera. In reality, the vast majority of the countless desperate Iranians are being offered false hope. Promises are broken with the same ease as they are made.

Lom has struggled to make his film (and finally got permission from Ahmadinejad himself!), but he has managed to create a revealing picture of what it really is in Iran. At the center is the presidential office, where an entire department has been set up where nothing else is done all day than answering letters. Anyone who has the opportunity to come by with his question is welcome to come and ask it. So far it all seems like a lot. But the Iranian people never get an answer to his question. Not an answer that will help them, at least. ‘We’ll see what we can do for you’ and ‘We must first see how much money is available for this’ are frequently heard responses. An answer for which the ailing population will not buy anything. A shocking scene is where two elderly ladies sit in the “waiting room” for a meeting with the president. They talk about their adoration for Ahmadinejad, but the conversation soon shifts to the ridiculous costs they have to incur to put a piece of meat or some strawberries on the table. They also hope out loud that the president can give their sons a nice job. They may not even realize that Lom is overhearing their conversation, because the open-mindedness is very fascinating. It makes the ‘punchline’ of the scene extra wry: Ahmadinejad canceled the meeting at the last minute…

You wonder why these people are still en masse behind the president. A counter voice is heard from the (mostly urban) youth, who openly admit that things haven’t gotten much better under Ahmadinejad. Inflation, for example, has soared in the years he has been in power. Under Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, the moderate Mohammad Khatami, there was also more freedom. A young, well-dressed woman (who recently had a nose job) complains about the strict Islamic dress code, one student confesses to being ashamed of his country’s foreign policy, others say they don’t care about politics because “it’s there anyway.” doesn’t get any better, whoever is in power’. Their cynicism is a logical consequence of years of promises made but never kept. The poor, mostly underdeveloped rural population is still falling for it. They glorify their president, who, unlike his predecessors, comes out of his ivory tower in Tehran to visit his people. Will they eventually come to see that this man is not awake to their problems?

With ‘Letters to the President’ Petr Lom has made a revealing film in which the populist propaganda politics that Ahmadinejad is pursuing is painfully exposed. Moreover, Lom confronts us Westerners with the harrowing reality. A staggering documentary!