Centerpiece Narrative: Where To?

Centerpiece Narrative
Director Assaf Machnes expected to attend in San Francisco

Hassan (Ehab Salami) left Palestine at twenty-five and has lived in Berlin for the past thirty years. He spends his nights driving strangers around the city in his Uber. Amir (Ido Tako, who also stars in SFJFF46 Opening Night film Tell Me Everything) is a young Israeli adrift in the city and chasing love, drawn deeper into Berlin’s nightlife than is good for him. When Amir keeps ending up in Hassan’s back seat, the two begin to talk and, over the course of two years of late-night rides, develop a kinship built on the particular honesty of strangers whose losses have more in common than their circumstances might suggest. Writer-director Assaf Machnes, who is based between Berlin and Tel Aviv, makes his feature debut with a film set almost entirely inside a car. The confined space suits his quiet, observational approach, attuned to the kinds of everyday interactions that often go unnoticed. Ehab Salami brings a dignified stillness to Hassan, a man who carries more than he lets on to the people moving in and out of his car. Ultimately, Where To? is as much about the distance between generations as it is about the distance between peoples: two men separated by age, nationality, and history find in their late-night rides something neither was looking for. —Johanna Gustin

US Premiere

Assaf Machnes is an Israeli filmmaker, writer, and cinematographer working across narrative, documentary, and experimental film. His work includes Auschwitz on My Mind (2013), Seven Minutes (2016), Gimel (2018), and Where To (2026), which premiered in the Berlinale Perspectives section. His films have screened at major international festivals including Venice, Berlinale, Locarno, Sarajevo, and Raindance, and often explore themes of identity, conflict, and human relationships through formally inventive approaches. Machnes is a graduate of the Met Film School in London and continues to develop projects for film and television.