With recent and ongoing elections in Europe and the Americas dominating the news, we thought we’d take a break from all of that and relax with some of the best movies ever made – about elections.
To [mis]quote Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others.”[1] So long as we’re stuck with democracy, we’re also stuck with elections, ranging from preschool morning snack selection to the European Parliament.[2]
With elections a fact of life, we may as well enjoy them. And if the actual elections are too fraught for enjoyment, then we can at least enjoy movies about elections.[3] Or, as Wilson Chapman put it when writing for IndieWire, “[I]f we can’t stop thinking about the election, we might as well doomscroll with a thematically-relevant masterwork on in the background.” With that in mind, Mr. Chapman curated his list of The 20 Best Election Movies of All Time.
The list features such notable things as the first woman elected US president (the cartoon character Betty Boop, in 1932), a documentary (Boys State), and thinly veiled fiction (e.g., Primary Colors’ satirical look at Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign). While we don’t have any preschool morning snack elections, we do have two high school student council elections (Election and Napoleon Dynamite). If, as is often said, all politics is local, then you don’t get much more local than that.
We provide IndieWire’s list of the 20 best election movies along with their EIDR IDs. You can refer to the EIDR records for more information and links to a wide variety of third-party sources with even more information about each film.
[1] The actual quote, from a 1947 address to the British House of Commons, is “[I]t has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, and that public opinion expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.”
[2] It should be noted that just because you have elections, doesn’t mean you really have a democracy. As with the preschool morning snack selection, bounds may be placed on exactly how free and fair any particular election actually is.
[3] As with the ongoing controversy concerning exactly what is a Christmas movie (there are those who argue – with reason – that the best Christmas movie of all time is Die Hard), the exact definition of an “election” movie can be somewhat contentious. Must it be focused on an election, or simply feature an election (or other political machinations) as a backdrop? How much election must there be? (After all, if you’re getting technical about it, The Godfather could be considered a Christmas movie. Go back and watch it and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll wait.)
The Best Election Movies*
*And One Mini-Series