From The Manchurian Candidate and Primary Colors to Uganda’s Bobi Wine: The People’s President, the high-stakes drama of voting season lends itself to film-making

You simply cannot move for high-profile elections lately. The UK’s big decision day is less than three weeks away; France called one last week in the wake of the EU election; my home country of South Africa had a particularly momentous one last month; Mexico just elected its first female president; and the US presidential face-off looms ominously ahead in the autumn. This can be easier to appreciate when you’re not emotionally invested in the outcome, but elections are irresistibly dramatic events, with all their inbuilt narratives of expectation and upset, triumph and downfall – so it’s no surprise that film-makers frequently seize on them.

Hollywood, in particular, is fixated on the vastly tiered labyrinth of American electoral systems, from the trivial to the most high ranking. Alexander Payne’s gleefully acidic teen comedy Election may seem a modest portrayal of a student council vote in a suburban high school, but it deftly distils all the manners, mores and strategies of grownup US politics into its showdown between a chilly overachiever and a trumped-up doofus. (Another school-based electoral comedy, Napoleon Dynamite, is perhaps less perceptive, but no less entertaining.)