A taxi-ride through the life of an immigrant

An intimate portrait of emigration and return. Propelled by the hopelessness of his prospects during thefascist period in Portugal, a man finds the motivation to leave. 20 years later he returns to a democratic country, and his personal history continues unfolding drawing in the lessons and reflections he has accumulated.

Joaquim is a Portuguese man who left the country in 1972, before the end of Salazar's 'dictadura', and spent 20 years in the US, doing all sorts of work including driving taxis and limousines. He had earlier worked repairing aircraft, and spent some time doing that for the army in Angola during the colonial war, where he began to see the poverty that African people had to face. That story, among many others, is recounted in the director Susana Nobre's first feature film, "Tempo commun" (Ordinary Time, 2018). In both films we see the director's talent for close-up character portraits, and in the earlier film the slow-moving intimacy between couples and friends is communicated to the viewer with a kind of sympathy that I have come to regard as characteristically Portuguese.

Life has its adventures, but these films engage with the deeper currents not the brash surface dramas.

The New Opportunities Programme in Portugal, where the director met Joaquim, was closed in 2011, but during that time hundreds of people passed through it, with the aim of converting the records of their life experience into a means to employment, for those who had often been forced to leave school after only their fourth or sixth year due to family poverty. However, the new film ''Jack's Ride" is not straight documentary, but a category between reality and fiction, which -to this viewer at least- masquerades as reality.

Joaquim is a real person, but some of the episodes in the film may not be, such as the episode of the $2000 debt, although they surely happened to someone somewhere. The viewer will make up their own mind, or perhaps leave the cinema wondering if they too have been 'taken for a ride' by her and Jack.

The Prisma spoke to Susana Nobre by Zoom, following the showing of her film at the Berlinale Film Festival, held in the first week of March 2022. The full interview can be accessed on the site of The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper with links and film stills: https://theprisma.co.uk/2022/01/03/a-taxi-ride-through-the-life-of-an-immigrant/