Election Night ("Valgaften") is a 1998 short film from Denmark by Anders Thomas Jensen.
Peter (Ulrich Thomsen) is your standard young white male liberal. He's drinking beer with his buddy at the bar one night when his buddy makes an idle comment about the election. The very socially conscious Peter realizes to his horror that he forgot to vote, and the polls close in 20 minutes. He hurriedly exits the bar and hails a cab—and has some bad luck with cab drivers.
Tropes:
- Condescending Compassion: Peter makes a great show of his anti-racism, calling Carl racist for not drinking Mexican beer, then ostentatiously getting out of a series of cabs driven by racist cabbies. However, when he finally gets to the polling place, but the black woman poll worker refuses to let him in because he's about a nanosecond late, Peter says he has to vote "for you people". The poll worker does not take kindly to this at all.
- Cut Himself Shaving: Peter gets punched in the face for being racist to the poll worker. When he gets back to the bar he explains his black eye by saying "I fell."
- Election Day Episode: A young man goes on a frantic race to vote before the polls close.
- Everything Is Racist: Peter gets a little carried away when he calls Carl racist for not liking Mexican beer (Dos Equis).note This gets funnier when he starts taking taxis and runs into real racists.
- Extremely Short Timespan: 20 minutes as Peter races across town, plus a coda presumably about 20 minutes later.
- Hypocritical Humor
- There's the Arab cabbie, an immigrant to Denmark who boasts about how he'll be getting citizenship in a year. Then he sees his favorite halal restaurant has been replaced by a sushi house, and he goes on an anti-Japanese rant.
- The anonymous fellow who hears the black poll worker call Peter racist. He says "were you being racist to the coon?", and punches Peter in the face.
- But mainly there's Peter, who for all his ostentatious liberalism can't quite seem to accept black folks, as shown when he refers to the black lady at the polling place as one of "you people".
- I Need a Freaking Drink: At the end of the story, the defeated Peter decides to return to the bar he started out at and try to recover from the ordeal he just went through with a beer.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The poll worker who won't let Peter vote even though he can't be more than a minute or two late.
- Racist Grandpa: The one elderly cabbie who talks about how great the Nazis are and how Europe has been corrupted by Turks raping women.
- Repressive, but Efficient: The Nazi cabbie, who goes on a rant about how "efficient" Hitler's government was at tasks like building roads.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Peter never manages to cast his vote and is even punched in the face for his trouble.
