Meriem Sakrouhi Talks ‘Mon Taxi’ And Tribeca Film Festival Journey

Moroccan filmmaker Meriem Sakrouhi started her short Mon Taxi as a way to connect with her late father. The resonant piece had its Tribeca World Premiere on June 7th and it also screens tonight as part of the Shorts: Where We Belong program. Sakrouhi talked about the short’s origins and bringing a “raw” approach to Mon Taxi.

Meriem Sakrouhi’s father passed away three years ago, and it wasn’t until six or seven months after his passing that she made that first phone call. “Honestly, it was just an impulse,” said Sakrouhi. “I had something that I was really happy to share with him and talk to him about, and I forgot that he passed.”

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Upon that realization, Sakrouhi recorded a voicemail and that moment felt “healing and spiritual.” Mon Taxi features a collection of these calls and they encompass different parts of Sakrouhi’s life. Some of the director’s reflections with her dad centers on her feelings about New York life, and the calls featured in the short, though edited, are the exact messages she left for her father.

“I made the decision of keeping everything raw,” said Sakrouhi, who described making the short a ‘healing and cathartic’ process. “And it stayed raw. Even the voicemails I kept are the originals I took. I will just form the story from what I originally have recorded, just to keep it authentic.”

Since her parents lived in Morocco and Sakrouhi is a New Yorker, phone calls was an integral part of the family dynamic. “When you talk to someone for so long, not talking to them anymore feels impossible,” said Sakrouhi. “I realized for me that the hardest part of losing my dad was not being able to call him.”

Full interview with Meriem Sakroughi:

For more information on Mon Taxi, go to its official website.