Tagline:

A Ukrainian film director drives a taxi through a war-torn Kyiv. As she and her passengers speak to the city with their fears, memories, and hopes, she searches for one quiet moment.

Synopsis: 
In wartime Kyiv, I navigate the city behind the wheel of a taxi, carrying strangers through streets marked by chaos, resilience, and relentless noise. Each ride becomes a passage through the city’s pulse: the rattle of trams, the hum of engines, the clatter of cobblestones, reflecting my own fatigue, restlessness, and search for silence in a place where silence no longer exists. My car becomes both a workplace and a moving observatory: a confined space where routine, exhaustion, and fleeting human presence reveal the emotional landscape of a city that never truly rests. The film does not unfold through conversations between the driver and the passengers. We do not speak to each other. Instead, each of us speaks silently to the city itself. The passengers carry their own thoughts, fears, jokes, memories, and hopes within them. My own voice runs parallel to theirs, never intersecting, yet existing in the same flow. Together, these inner monologues form a single, layered voice of Kyiv. Kyiv Under My Wheels observes the city as a living organism, revealed through rhythm, movement, repetition, and sound rather than dialogue or plot. The camera does not explain the city; it listens to it. The human presence exists inside the urban flow, shaped by its tempo, its violence, and its fragile moments of balance. The film reflects on resilience, on listening when the world becomes unbearably loud, and on holding on to creativity as a form of survival.

Project representatives:

Marina Baibarza
Wera Englot