Election Night (1998)

With just twenty minutes left before the polls close, international aide worker “Peter” (Ulrich Thomsen) leaves the scintillating conversation he is having in the pub and tries to get a taxi to the polling station. His first driver makes racist observations about just about everyone so he gets out. With time ticking down he gets a second cab with little improvement. Then a third whose perspective is different, but no less pejorative. Finally, with the rain tipping down he decides to run but can he arrive in time or might he just as well have stayed in the dry? The whole thrust of this is overly contrived, but it still raises the thorny issue of what freedom of speech actually means. The right to speak your mind or the right to be offensive, or both? Where do these boundaries blur, or cross? Do these taxi drivers, or even does “Peter” himself, realise the subliminal impact of their judgmental language on the observer, the listener or perhaps even on an unwitting subject on the wrong end of a frustrated tongue. Worth a watch.