Borom taxi, a journey through immigrant life in Buenos Aires

A group of Senegalese men survive selling on the streets and beaches. Being so far apart from relatives and partners adds to their difficulties. This is the first of a series of articles in The Prisma about immigrant experiences portrayed in documentary films.

Migration is mostly to escape insufferable situations and to find better ones, and the way a film-maker interacts with the topic is often conditioned by the ways they meet their characters. Sometimes a group is consciously targeted, sometimes a film-maker finds themselves drawn into immigrant life by accident and curiosity, as is the case with Andres Guerberoff, who made "Borom taxi'; his first film about a group of street sellers he met in the area where he lived. The film won first prize in Cinema Tropical at the Labex festival, a Work in Progress in Buenos Aires, consisting of six awards of services like translation, editing etc. The film had its world premiere at the Visions du Reel festival in Switzerland which was also available online this year. 

In conversation with The Prisma, Andres tells how his curiosity seeing Senegalese people selling in the streets, speaking a strange language, and a chance meeting at a religious festival held in a nightclub drew him into their life and culture, and made him want to make a film. And making this film was a mind-opening experience for him, as he recognized personal issues which were echoed in their lives. The precarious life of migrants is vividly described as it impacts on his attempts to plan the film. 

Other articles in this series will look at the experience of rehabilitation from trauma; travelling in a large migrant convoy to the US; the life-threatening journeys of those who try to enter Fortress Europe in small boats; and the situations that often lead people to migrate from poverty in an African country.

 This Interview was first published on July 6th 2021 in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper, and can be read in full with photos here https://theprisma.co.uk/2021/06/07/borom-taxi-a-journey-through-immigrant-life-in-buenos-aires/ 

Visions du Reel said your film is one that starts from the question: "How do you film the Other?" What is your approach?