The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival has given SLO Review the opportunity to preview some of the narrative and documentary films on the festival’s April 24-29, 2025 program schedule. Follow the links to purchase tickets to see these notable films for yourself.
Bare-Knuckle Realism
Driver is a feature-length documentary directed by Nesa Azimi and featuring truck drivers Desiree Wood, Michelle Kitchin, Deb “Dingo” Desiderato, Jess Graham, and Brita Nowak.
The allure of Driver comes from the lifting of the veil from the behind-the-scenes lives of these women, sharing stories of misogyny and harassment they face on the road, and what they’re doing about it as a powerful sisterhood.
That premise is sort of the promise Driver makes to its audience, and it almost gets there, but not quite.
Azimi does capture an authenticity in these women that leaves the viewer leaning into their personal experiences of life in a truck.”
Viewers first meet Desiree Wood, who is attempting to restart her life as a cross-country trucker, though it is never completely clear as to why she came to that career decision.
In short, we know something profound happened in Wood’s life, but what was it? It’s believable that women experience harassment and other kinds of abuse in what is still a male-dominated field, but a lack of backstory and context leaves the film feeling a bit threadbare at times.
That said, Azimi does capture an authenticity in these women that leaves the viewer leaning into their personal experiences of life in a truck—stories of how they manage hours of isolation, what they eat on the road, and how they manage to shower and brush their teeth on long hauls.
A large part of Driver’s bare-knuckle realism comes through its cinematography.
The camera work of Joel Van Haren is beautifully executed and has a quality of social realism leaving characters unmasked without makeup or glam lighting. In fact, there’s artistic beauty in the lines of these people’s faces and close shots of teeth biting into a Red Vine piece of licorice.
Van Haren puts viewers in trucks so vividly that you can nearly feel the wind through truck windows as you sit in awe of American landscapes—ranging from vast wide-open spaces to congested truck stops where you can almost smell diesel—as the minutiae of life on the road is revealed. The sound of cascading showers, the bristle of teeth brushing, the keeping of paper-wrapped fast food warm as drivers hurry to their trucks—all help viewers imagine themselves in this life.
The director lands several elements of this film well, such as the visual storytelling and intimacy with the women she interviews.”
You may come away from the film with a newfound respect for trucking, which delivers about 73 percent of all freight by weight in the United States, according to the American Truckers Association. And the Driver Resource Center says that that transport is carried by some 3.6 million men and women behind the wheel.
So this introduction to the trucking life is a meaningful one to American consumers who may not otherwise consider how food and other goods wind up on store shelves.
All in all, the director lands several elements of this film well, such as the visual storytelling and intimacy with the women she interviews. Perhaps focusing her story on one central trucking issue, such as the lives of women truckers, would have added considerably more depth.
Editor’s Note: Driver (USA, run time 90 minutes, rated PG-13, in English) screens at the SLO International Film Festival on April 25, 26, and 27.