Delude

Multiple stories of taxi drivers while they work one night. A road movie set in present day Bulgaria, a country remains optimistic, mainly because all the realists and pessimists have left. At a meeting with his banker, a small business owner, who drives a cab to make ends meet, discovers the bribe he will have to pay to get a loan has doubled. The ethics board that reviewed his complaint about extortion now wants its share of the action. At his wit's end, he shoots the banker and then himself. The incident sparks national debate on talk radio about how despair has taken over civil society. Meanwhile, six taxi drivers and their passengers move through the night, each in hope of finding a brighter way forward. —Stephan Komandarev As they struggle to make ends meet, a series of cab drivers and their rides unfold a bittersweet social kaleidoscope in present-day Sofia over the course of twenty-four hours. Pivoting around an ugly case of bureaucracy and corruption with a tragic ending, six diverse taxi drivers inadvertently take part in a mosaic of graphic vignettes about loss, retribution, suicide, adultery, immigration, and shattered dreams. Is the confined space of a taxi merely an unflattering mirror of what went wrong in Bulgaria? —Nick Riganas