TAXIFILMFEST

The taxi is dead, long live the taxi!

editors — 2026-09-26T08:23:01Z

Berlin-Wedding, 24 September 2026

Drawing on nearly 150 years' experience behind the wheel of Berlin taxis, we have drafted this manifesto for the incoming Berlin Senate at the 3rd Taxi Film Festival 2026. It sets out the key problems facing the Berlin taxi industry and puts forward proposals for their resolution.

A poverty-proof income

The Berlin Senate must create the conditions under which a poverty-proof income can be earned by taxi drivers. As a first step, the statutory minimum wage must be enforced in taxi and hire car companies.

Combating organised crime

Criminal gangs have taken over a large number of taxi firms and dominate the hire car industry. Therefore, the Trade Inspectorate, the police and – via a Bundesrat initiative – the customs authorities must be resourced in such a way that, on average, no single official is responsible for monitoring more than 100 firms. Only in this way can the industry and its workers be effectively protected.

Minimum fares and the obligation to return

Minimum fares and the obligation for hire cars to return to their company headquarters must be enforced on the streets on a daily basis. To this end, the police must be authorised by the Senate.

Quality, professional competence and job profile

The Senate should introduce a compulsory professional competence examination for taxis and hire cars. Customers must only be transported by drivers who have mastered the sector-specific rules and the basic principles of the hospitality industry.

The Senate, together with trade unions and the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK), should develop a job profile and a training programme for the carriage of passengers in taxis and hire cars.

Taxi ranks

Taxi drivers and passengers need good taxi ranks. Drivers need access to toilets and seating outside their vehicles, as well as sufficient distance from moving traffic. Berliners should be able to board a taxi at all railway stations and major hotels, as well as at taxi ranks at intervals of at least 500 metres. This will also enhance safety for everyone.

Integration into public transport and collective agreements

Taxis must be structurally integrated into the publicly operated public transport system, and fares wages be aligned with those of the BVG and S-Bahn.

The transport transition

For the transport transition to succeed in creating a liveable city, the number of motor vehicles in the city must be reduced. This requires good taxis. To this end, the Berlin Senate should support the procurement of 250 taxis with special equipment for wheelchairs.

Smart City, Transparency and Open Data

The real-time recording of revenue and movement data for taxis and hire cars should be implemented, and the data should be made available as open data via API wherever possible. This combats exploitation and wage fraud and enables the availability of taxis to be managed.

Reports on economic viability and monitoring periods

The Senate must commission annual studies into the economic viability of the taxi industry and regulate the number of taxis in such a way that poverty-proof wages become a reality.

In a nutshell

The Senate must no longer leave Berlin's taxi drivers to fend for themselves.

Postscript

There are many other problems and areas requiring attention, such as passenger pick-up at BER Airport. We have limited ourselves to issues that can be resolved directly through decisions by the Berlin Senate.

Contact

Telephone +49 176 96726984
info@taxifilmfest.de

Films and the programme are online

Admin — 2026-09-16T17:14:21Z

The Taxifilmfest was born out of necessity in 2023 and put together in barely six weeks. This spontaneous, chaotic and radical approach has characterised the second and now also the third edition of the Taxifilmfest.

Go to the films

Despite all this: taxi culture!

We are delighted that taxi culture is alive and thriving in difficult times. The 3rd Taxifilmfest in 2026 bears witness to this.

Since the second edition in the cold February of 2025, Berlin's taxi industry has suffered such brutal blows that it remained unclear right up until the last minute whether there would be a third edition of the Taxifilmfest.

Meanwhile, taxi culture is struggling, fighting back and carrying on. We are showcasing young female filmmakers who are continuing to write the story of taxi culture through their films. Their mothers, fathers or grandparents built up a modest standard of living with their taxis, and the younger generation are grateful to be able to carry on this culture.

The 3rd Taxifilmfest in 2026 is all about the human element. This is just as political as the themes of 2024 and 2025.

The whole world in a taxi

“A Taxi Ride in Autumn” and “Taxitales” show how all the events of the world unfold in the driver's seat and on the back seat of a taxi.

‘She Drives the Night' from the Netherlands showcases the taxi as a tool for new forms of social engagement today. ‘¡TAXI!' from New York tells the story of the ultimately successful hope for social advancement.

In the feature film ‘Taxi Warren' from the Ivory Coast, we witness how family, politics and the police collide and shape a young man's struggle for his future. Here, taxi culture develops as part of the rise of a society that is taking shape after over a hundred years of colonial exploitation and subsequent civil wars. Looking beyond the European horizon inspires courage and a desire for something new.

Background: Berlin's taxi industry

The majority of Berlin's honest taxi companies have now closed down, been sold off or gone bankrupt. Only a handful of independent taxi operators continue the tradition and the renowned quality of Berlin's taxis. They have to make do with starvation wages and turnover that make it impossible to pay even the statutory minimum wage.

Three factors have led to this disaster.

For decades, the regulatory body LABO has been undermining the supervision and regulation of the taxi and hire car industry. Without its failure, none of the other factors contributing to the demise of the Berlin taxi industry could have come to pass.

For nearly 30 years, an ever-increasing number of dubious taxi companies have been putting so many vehicles on the roads that, by the time the Minimum Wage Act came into force in August 2014, the turnover required to pay the minimum wage was only being generated in exceptional cases. Since then, not even the minimum starvation wage has been achievable. Many taxi companies managed to stay afloat for a while by illegally imposing low wages on their drivers and systematically falsifying the working hours recorded on payslips.
The drivers were unable to stop this trend because they were not unionised.

Then came the abolition of the local knowledge test for all hire car and taxi drivers. This enabled platform companies to drive forward the ‘Uberisation' of the business and put a huge number of poor people with no professional qualifications behind the wheel of their vehicles. They work for even less money and are instructed by criminal bosses to claim ‘income support' from the Jobcentre using manipulated pay and working-hour records that show lower figures.
As a result, they end up under the control of organised gangs, so-called ‘rackets', and are kept at arm's length from trade unions and social integration in the long term.

Wage and price dumping by ‘Uberised' hire cars has dealt the final blow to Berlin's taxi industry. Today, many taxi companies are in the hands of the very same sort of crooks whose support helped Uber grow in Berlin.

Since 1961, Berlin's taxi industry had developed its own distinctive and sophisticated culture of cooperation and interaction with a wide variety of customers, a culture that had evolved over the years. At its heart was the taxi driver, who knew Berlin better than any internet platform does today, and who was on first-name terms with the worlds of politics, business and culture. This is how taxi culture develops – or something similar – all over the world, as long as a ‘chauffeur' can support his family.

Uber's incursion into India ruined the Indian taxi industry just as it did in Berlin at the same time. The cause and the script are always the same, everywhere. Uber, Nestlé and similar international corporations successfully transform markets into exploitative monopolies wherever social structures fail. A neoliberal Modi and a neoliberal Merz are each, in their own countries, driving the success of these mega-corporations and the impoverishment of the middle class.

Programme is ready

Admin — 2026-09-13T19:47:06Z

... but not yet translated. Until Tuesday you still have to refer to our german version.

- Blog

Third Berlin Taxifilmfest 24–27 September 2026

editors — 2026-09-09T11:00:54Z

Berlin, Wednesday 9 September 2026

Today we are pleased to announce films from the following countries:

Germany
Ivory Coast
Iran
Italy
Canada
the Netherlands
Panama
the USA

The genres range from feature-length films offering deep insights into the taxi industry and living conditions in the Ivory Coast, through shorter feature films and documentaries with moving insights, to ironic comedy in the form of AI animation and cartoons.

The full programme will be available on these pages from the evening of Sunday 13 September 2026.

The taxi is dead, long live the taxi!

In 2026, we at Bettlerverlag, with the support of BALZ, and funding from the Senate Department for Labour, Social Affairs, Equality, Integration, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination as well as from taxi drivers, be organising the Berlin Taxi Film Festival. As always, admission will be free.

Our piggy bank looks forward to your donations on the night.

On Saturday, 26 September 2026,

we will be screening the best taxi films of the year from around the world as part of the evening programme at the BALZ Advice Centre. In the days leading up to the festival, there will be an opening night and a themed day, and on Sunday 27 September, we will be showing a retrospective of films from this year and previous years in the afternoon and evening.

On the evening of Sunday 13 September 2026, we will publish the provisional programme here. Further information on films and events will follow in the days after that. We look forward to seeing you there!

Klaus Meier, curator and director of the Taxi Film Festival.

We will be answering questions about the programme and schedule from Monday 7 September 2026 via email and by telephone.

The third Berlin TaxifilmfestSeptember 2026

Admin — 2025-11-20T11:26:34Z

From 18 November 2025, you can submit films [1] , make suggestions, and participate in the preparation and film selection process. The Taxifilmfest is a small, handmade film festival with big ambitions that needs your support.

The third Taxifilmfest is themed around ‘taxi culture'.

With this third edition of Taxifilmfest, we are once again showing that we don't just drive people from A to B, because nowadays robots can do that if necessary. Over many decades, we have created our own taxi culture, which we present and defend with Taxifilmfest.

With this blog, we offer insights into the festival workshop and reveal which events at the Taxi Film Festival will be particularly exciting.

Berlin's taxi drivers are closely connected to their city and contribute greatly to making it a liveable place. We share this with our colleagues in London, Paris and all other cities around the world, where long-time residents keep the social and economic fabric alive with their taxis.

You, dear Berliners and guests, are cordially invited to experience at the Taxi Film Festival how the men and women behind the wheel shape their cities and regions around the world.

Dear filmmakers, submit your films to the Taxi Film Festival. Dear colleagues behind the wheel who make films or videos about your experiences, write about them or address the threats to our wonderful profession, you are invited to present yourselves and your work at the Taxi Film Festival in February 2026.

Write to info@taxifilmfest.de or submit your films via the platform Filmfreeway.

We look forward to seeing you!
Klaus Meier,
Director and initiator of the Taxi Film Festival.

[1] We use the Filmfreeway platform, but we are also happy to accept films directly from you.