Stories From Our Land 1.5: Going Home
2011 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Bjorn Simonsen
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tense
Iqaluit cab driver Abdoul Aziz Sakho, his rooftop sign numbered 148, spends an ordinary evening ferrying mostly familiar passengers around town, until one unsettling fare disrupts the routine.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A cab driver's evening in Iqaluit sounds like the setup for a snooze, but that unsettling fare is clearly the film's entire gambit—and I'm curious whether Simonsen actually commits to the disruption or just hints at it like a coward.
Simonsen's observational realism sits squarely in the tradition of Dardenne-inflected character study, where routine becomes texture and a single passenger becomes the film's ethical pivot point.
The film's power lives in how it uses the cab itself—a confined, moving frame where familiarity breeds vulnerability—and then introduces one passenger who breaks the accumulated trust of an ordinary night.