Directed by Heddy Honigmann • Documentary • 1993 • 80 minutes
This documentary is an offbeat "road movie" in which acclaimed documentarian Heddy Honigmann travels with, and thereby discovers the stories of, taxi drivers in Lima. In the early 1990s, in response to Peru's inflationary economy and a government destabilized by corruption and Shining Path terrorism, many middle-class professionals used their own cars to moonlight as taxi drivers in order to weather the financial crisis.
Through the filmmaker's distinctive approach—"I don't do interviews," Honigmann has explained, "I have conversations"—METAL AND MELANCHOLY learns about the intimate relationships these part-time cabbies have developed with their vehicles, and the ingenious methods they use to thwart car thieves. Afterwards, the taxi drivers open up emotionally to relate heartfelt accounts of domestic adversity, love, life-threatening illness, romance, economically frustrated ambition, pain and suffering. "Life is hard, but beautiful," one of the drivers sums up philosophically.
"A panorama of human spirit and ingenuity." —The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Directed by Dario Guerrero • Documentary • 2022 • 60 minutes
Weaving together footage from over a quarter of a century, Rocío follows the family of undocumented Mexican immigrant and Harvard University student Dario Guerrero as they struggle to stay together in the face of his mother's terminal ...
Directed by Heddy Honigmann • Documentary • 2006 • 95 minutes
Through a leisurely tour of the world-famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place for legendary writers, composers, painters and other artists from around the world, FOREVER provides an unusually poignant, emotiona...
Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2016 • 114 minutes
Following Ukraine’s revolution in 2013, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky decides to travel throughout the region and visit his family. He talks on camera with family members in Ukraine, Crimea and Donetsk, hoping to gain a better understanding ...