Almost every week, 72-year-old Bobby makes the three-hour trip from his home in Vienna to a hospital in Salzburg, where he visits a friend who is in a coma. To cut fuel costs and have some company, he offers rides through a ride-sharing app. His fellow travelers range from a young conscript and a history student who regards Avatar as a Marxist masterpiece to a young family to a Romanian migrant worker who missed her bus. Their conversations cover family, the legacy of World War II, death, illness, migration, and friendship; each new passenger reveals a little more about what drives Bobby too.
Everything feels spontaneous and authentic, but the way the people are filmed—as though the viewer were sitting right beside them—suggests a deliberate directorial hand. As the Austrian mountains and forests rush by, the unfolding seasons and conversations combine to create a mosaic-like, quietly political portrait of today's Europe.
Stills
