The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has wrapped up, and one of its big winners is “Silent City Driver” directed by the prolific Mongolian theatre and movie director Sengedorj Janchivdorj. The film has scooped awards for the Best Film and the Best Production Design. Janchivdorj’s slow-paced character study about a lonesome ex-con who finds solace in his job as a hearse-driver, was one of the films that stood out in the Official Selection from the beginning. It’s a gripping, beautifully shot drama about a man tortured by demons from the past who tries to accept his new life in a type of inner incarceration.
Silent City Driver is screening at Tallinn Black Nights
Myagmar (Tuvshinbayar Amartuvshin) has been released from prison after serving 14 years for a crime he will call an accident. Once outside in freedom, he immediately goes to search for a job, a task that proves difficult for someone with his past. So, when he is offered the opportunity to work as a hearse-driver for one of the funeral homes in Ulaanbaatar, he is quick to take it. Nevertheless, this one gig isn’t enough to fill up his days. Due to the local custom that defines when the deceased can be buried, Myagmar can work on uneven dates only. But when he strikes friendships with the blind coffin-maker who discovers his talent for carpentry and a young Buddhist monk Sodoo (Bat-Erdene Munkhbat) who accompanies the deceased to the cemetery, his life takes an unexpectedly light turn, even if it’s only for a fraction of time.
Myagmar is witnessing strange arguments and heartbreaks at funerals, and can’t stop himself from crying when someone innocent – young or old, loses their life. Watching his otherwise expressionless face showing profound sorrow is as mysterious as the man himself, who has surrounded himself with stray dogs that he treats with great love and care. As someone who clearly avoids the company of people in favour of dogs, he feels “at home” in the company of the dead who are – just like him – very silent. Right from the beginning, it is evident that the tall, pale man carries a great burden in his chest. It is in the solitude of his home that we get the first idea about the origins of his sorrow. While in prison, the most important person in his life – his mother – passed away.
Check the interview with the director
With the photography almost entirely stripped of colours and shot in widescreen by the cinematographer Enkhbayar Enkhtur, “Silent City Driver” gets wrapped in the solemn setting fitting to its main protagonist’s emotional blackness. Tuvshinbayar Amartuvshin’s strong screen presence is the film’s driving force. His portrayal of a troubled man trapped in his own solitude and difficulty of re-connecting with the world outside the prison gates is truly breathtaking. Generally, the film’s cast is quite strong and their performances are glued by the rock solid script penned by the director and Nomuunzul Turmunkh, Janchivdorj’s collaborator on “Life: Admiral” (2018) and “White Blessing” (2017). Their joined forces prove fruitful again.
When not driving, Myagmar helps the coffin maker with carpentry, and when the word about his (hobby) talent for stone masonry spreads, he starts getting private commissions for decent money. By chance, he will also encounter the blind man’s daughter Saruul (Narantsetseg Ganbaatar), whose life becomes hell after the release of a sex video she was unaware of on the internet. It is less of a sexual attraction between the two than a connection established through their otherness and the unwilling isolation from the environment. Saruul becomes Myagmar’s social project of a kind, or maybe his second chance to do the right thing until his attempts to help her shatter, igniting despair and anger.
The solemn tune “Comme un Boomerang” sung by Serge Gainsbourg is constantly recurring in the movie, it’s stanza resonating with Myagmar’s inner suit: “I feel booms and bangs shake my wounded heart.” Everyone in this powerful drama is shaken to the core, for better or worse.
“Silent City Driver” is without question a movie that stays with the audience for a very long time. This great discovery at Tallinn Black Nights that was rightfully picked up by the jury of the Official Selection Jury as the big winner, has a great chance of travelling the world for a very long time, conquering the hearts of the spectators across the globe. Its is also one of the rare examples of recent movies whose length doesn’t impose any challenge, each minute of its duration being completely justified.
