Directions

A man learns that the bribe he paid to get a loan approved has doubled overnight, and he goes for his banker. Sofia wakes to the news, and the film scatters from there into the night shift of six taxi drivers. One listens to the argument on the radio, one fights with a passenger, one cries at the wheel. Each story is a single ride, most of them shot in one take, the camera looking out from the front seat. Stephan Komandarev's film, shown in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2017, stands on the thin line between the people thinking of leaving the country and the ones who have decided to stay. Anger, debt, humiliation, and now and then an unexpected kindness. The director says the stories were assembled from real events and from conversations he had with drivers.