“Taxi drivers are like the lyrical voice of the city – you can confess anything to them”
– The Greek-Indonesian filmmaker elaborates on her bittersweet collective portrait of three Athenian taxi drivers coping with the economic crisis and loneliness while finding solace in creativity
(© Thessaloniki Film Festival/Studio Aris Rammos)
With a background in photography and journalism, Eirini Vourloumis has crafted an enchanting tale about Athens by mingling with its “night guardians” in her feature debut, The Way Elsewhere [+see also:
interview: Eirini Vourloumis
film profile], which world-premiered in the International Competition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival and is now screening in CPH:DOX‘s NEXT:WAVE Competition. Speaking to her helped us understand the personal bond she has formed with her characters, unseen by the naked eye, and the delicate presence of her own personality in the film.
Cineuropa: You started out as a photographer and journalist. What prompted the shift towards documentary cinema?
Eirini Vourloumis: I was looking for something that would challenge me, so I moved from photojournalism to more conceptual photography because I felt I couldn’t fully express myself. Still images began to feel limiting, while the moving image is multidimensional – creatively, it gave me a much larger scope. All of my personal photo projects were about Athens, and I wanted to push that boundary and express the city in a richer, more layered way.
I’d never made a film before – not even a short, and I didn’t go to film school, so it was incredibly difficult. But I worked very closely with my DoP, Mihalis Gkatzogias, because I didn’t feel fully confident, technically. Without the amazing team and producer I had, it wouldn’t have been possible.
The imagery is carefully crafted and poetic – a spider crawling on the car window, the recurring yellow hue creating a visual parallel between the taxis and the surrounding space. How did you conceive that visual texture?
I was instinctively drawing from the characters themselves. Each one is filmed in their own aesthetic universe. Giorgos, for example, is very much stuck in the 1980s – his house, his songs, his sensibility – so that influenced the visual tone around him.
The spider scene came from a personal memory I recreated, and it suits Puma, who is deeply connected to nature; for him, it is almost metaphysical, a source of luck and spiritual strength. The spider becomes part of that magical realism.
How did you find your protagonists?
The idea grew out of photographing the economic crisis. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time in taxis and always felt comfortable there. Taxi drivers are like the lyrical voice of the city – you can confess anything to them. They are also on the front line, witnessing how a city transforms in times of crisis.
In 2020, I began interviewing drivers in ports, airports and taxi ranks – more than 50 in total. It took about six months to find them and another six months just to spend time together before we started shooting seriously – in their homes, with their families, in their cars, in clubs. Now we’re still very close. It’s important for me to approach people with care.
I chose these three men in particular because they had parallel passions beyond driving. I was looking for creative people and collaboration. What united them was a longing: For Puma, it’s nature; for Sunny, it’s acting; for Giorgos, it’s singing. I hope viewers feel that, despite everything Athens has gone through, there is still hope – and the possibility of fulfilling one’s dreams.
The film has a clear and carefully crafted structure. To what extent did you intervene in the characters’ lives in order to achieve the desired effect on screen?
It was a nightmare [laughs]. I had a script before shooting and was working based on that, but editing it down from the roughly 140 hours of material took two years out of the total of six for the film. We first built a one-hour film around each character, then interwove them. There were fictional elements: for example, the storyline about the owl, the patron of Athens, was constructed. I knew the character would lose it and search for it. The search is metaphorical: we all believe in something beyond ourselves.
Also, Sunny’s dance scene works as catharsis after a difficult moment earlier. I included things that mattered to me politically as well, like a speech by Donald Trump playing on the car radio – it reflected my anger at the time.
How much of your own personality is in the film?
Each character reflects something of me. Giorgos and I are night people; I love going out, and I love cheesy ballads. With Sunny, I connected through experiences of xenophobia. Greece can still be quite xenophobic, and as someone who is Greek-Indonesian, I’ve felt that. I knew from the beginning that I wanted a singer and a person of colour in the film. And Puma’s mystical side resonates with me as well.
