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Left to his own fate, Paulo, recently divorced, starts working as a taxi driver to survive in the big city and pay his 10-year-old son’s pension. While driving through the endless nights of Rio de Janeiro, we follow him in the interior of his taxi, where passengers who connect more intensely with Paulo’s history pass by. In this dark and throbbing chronicle, the unpredictability of the night occupies the forefront of the film, where oscillating and claustrophobic images work as a vehicle for anguish.
In this eighth feature film by Eryk Rocha, strolling between fiction and documentary, the director films the streets of Rio de Janeiro as a dark and decadent space, and where hope is only reborn inside the taxi, when new passengers help Paulo overtake loneliness and the urban chaos inherent to his night work. Only these characters can bring love and happiness back into Paulo’s life. (Inês Lima Torres)