Self Driver (2 Stars)

This is the second film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

"Self Driver" is another low budget film. It was filmed in Toronto in 14 days and cost a few thousand dollars. Despite the low price it has high production quality. The director introduced the film, telling us that it had been filmed with a camera that was new on the market. He couldn't have made the film a year earlier.

It's about a taxi driver who's struggling to make money. A customer offers him a job working with an app that will make him much more money. He has to follow instructions given by the app, otherwise deductions will be made from his account. This comes to clashes when customers tell him to drive one way but the app tells him to drive another.

The film is weird. The app's mechanical voice gives him absurd instructions, such as telling him to hit a customer. But he has to do it. He needs the money.

The film's atmosphere is overpowering, but as it continues I kept waiting for an explanation to finally be made. There's no explanation. At the end of the film we know nothing more than at the start. I can see a message: what's more important, earning money or doing what's right? That wasn't enough for me.