Metal and Melancholy

The documentary was filmed inside taxis in Lima. At the start of the nineties Peru was in a heavy crisis. Inflation had eaten away at wages. The state was shaken by corruption and by armed conflict. The actions of the Shining Path kept the country on edge. People from the middle class had to look for extra work. Many turned their own cars into taxis. Teachers, engineers and civil servants took the wheel. The film travels along with these drivers. Each of them tells his own story from behind the wheel. The cars are old, the roads bad and the earnings small. The account gives this without falling into complaint. The camera looks out from inside the car. Jorge Rodríguez Paz appears in the eighty minute documentary, a Dutch and Peruvian production Heddy Honigmann finished in 1994.