TAXIBOL

Italy | 2023 | 50 min

On board a vehicle driving through the streets of Havana, Lav Diaz chats with a taxi driver. The Filipino film director discusses his filmmaking in terms of a mission, laying the foundations for a film that can offer justice to his people: in this case, by going in search of a general of the Marcos regime who is allegedly a refugee in Cuba. Santambrogio takes up his master's challenge, fleshing out a fiction, whose codes are fascinating, that serves not only as a tribute to the cinema of the master, but also as a strong declaration of intent on the power of images. Under the disguise of a revenge movie, Taxibol is first and foremost a political reflection on cinema and power that develops like a mirror-image structure: the dialogue/manifesto in the taxi is a prelude to a narration that re-invents itself, as much in the dilated and immersive observation of the frozen time in the hacienda of the mass murderer, as in the archive footage that offers a necessary reverse shot on past and present injustices. (a.d.)