Goodbye Solo: Synopsis

A Senegalese taxi driver living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina makes the decision to befriend a depressive passenger with a tragic plan in director Ramin Bahrani's deeply humanistic drama. Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané) is a cab driver whose believes that everyone should be engaged and concerned with one another, and thus lacks the self-conscious view of relationships so prevalent in North American society. When a seventy year old passenger named William (Red West) hails Solo's cab and books him for another ride in two weeks during the course of his ride, it quickly becomes apparent over the course of their negotiation that the man isn't planning to return from his impending trip. Troubled at the thought of what his passenger has planned, Solo does his best to strike up a friendship and convince William to reconsider. But William harbors a pain more deep-rooted than Solo first senses, displaying a visible desire for privacy that immediately putts him at odds with the genuinely concerned cab driver.