Driven

Ali is a refugee from Afghanistan who fled with his wife and young children in the days following the Taliban’s rise to power in 2021. Like generations of immigrants before him, he is determined to make a better life for his family in the United States. After struggling to survive on Lyft and Uber driving, he decides to go to trucking school because, in his words, trucking provides “freedom.” While following Ali’s training, we learn about a group of Afghan refugees in Philadelphia who are receiving their truck license training through community colleges in Bucks County and Montgomery county, with the support of a federally funded program that trains American veterans and Afghan refugees to fill the critical shortage of truck drivers. Driven documents the lengths of training that refugees like Ali go through to get a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), and shows how the lessons learned in the truck yard are also lessons about what it means to survive in America. The question of whether Ali and the other Afghan refugees pass their Commercial Driving License tests is the central tension of the film, but Driven ultimately asks bigger questions about the changing nature of the American dream that drives so many immigrant communities who arrive in the United States. The film is both a deeply personal exploration of Ali’s trucking journey, and a nuanced look at the struggles that refugees face upon arriving in America at a time when their presence, and so many other programs of humanitarian migrant support and protection, is under threat.