‘POV’ Introduces Women Long-Haul Truck Drivers Rallying For Workers’ Rights in DRIVER
Overview
Monday, September 1, 2025, at 10pm on PBS Television; Streaming Available on the PBS App Until November 30, 2025
Download Press Photos • #DRIVERFilmPBS
Brooklyn, N.Y. – August 5, 2025 – POV, the multi-Emmy® and Peabody award-winning documentary series, follows the journey of Desiree Wood, who takes a second lease on life as a long-haul trucker in DRIVER, the feature debut of director Nesa Azimi. Produced by Azimi, Nicolas Borel, and Ines Hofmann Kanna, the documentary captures Desiree Wood’s fight for a life on the road alongside an irreverent gang of women drivers.
Executive produced by Maxyne Franklin, DRIVER will make its national broadcast premiere on POV Monday, September 1, 2025 at 10pm (check local listings) on PBS Television. It will then be available to stream until November 30, 2025 at pbs.org, and the PBS App. Now in its 38th season, POV continues to mark its place as America’s longest-running nonfiction series.
Over the course of three years, DRIVER follows Desiree as she brings together her fellow truck drivers to demand respect in an industry that sees them as anonymous and disposable. In a rapidly changing labor landscape, Desiree and her community of drivers band together against the crushing forces of an industry indifferent to their survival.
Using an intimate and observational lens, DRIVER captures the experience of Desiree’s life on the road as she and her fellow women drivers support one another amid a system that routinely promises and denies them the safety and autonomy they require. Desiree struggles to balance the demands of being a working truck driver with her ambitions as the head of a driver-led movement run from the cab of her truck, which is constantly at risk of being repossessed. Working as a truck driver and being part of this sisterhood means everything to Desiree—having found her place in the world, she is determined to keep it.
“I wanted to make DRIVER to tell a universal story about labor through the experience of Desiree and her fellow truck drivers; formidable people whose lives are imperiled by corporate and public indifference,” said director Nesa Azimi. “Despite this alienating condition, Desiree and her friends work hard to maintain their bonds and provide solace to one another in an industry that conspires to keep them apart. I chose a durational approach to filming to prioritize an emotional connection to Desiree and her community. This film captures their spirits and tenacity in a real, less mediated way. More than characters defined by plight and circumstances, we see Desiree and her fellow drivers as the tough, hilarious, multifaceted people that they are: women who resist their condition in favor of a more collective way of living and working, with dignity and strength.
“PBS is the perfect home for this film. To have DRIVER on POV means that we can reach a broad audience of workers, truck drivers, and an American public who might not otherwise have heard these stories.”
“DRIVER offers a rare look inside an often overlooked industry where women continue to fight for equality and fairness,” said Chris White, Executive Producer, POV. “Protagonists like Desiree Wood are not only advocates for the women they know, but for those who will follow in this male-dominated space.”
DRIVER premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2024 and won the Best First-Time Filmmaker Award at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival (2024). It was also an official selection at the Camden International Film Festival (2024), DC/DOX (2024), and the Palm Springs International Film Festival (2025).
Raves include:
"...a simply-made gaze into an overlooked culture, one deserving of far more respect than it’s received and one that Azimi has captured beautifully."
- Brian Farvour, The Playlist
"An existential reminder that life is a long and winding road and that perhaps we would all do well to take more notice of those who are passing along it, servicing needs we rarely even think about."
- Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film
“A humane and miraculous slice of life.”
– Alan French, Sunshine State Cineplex
“A quiet, yet engrossing, fly-on-the-wall style documentary driven by both fascinating characters and brilliantly rendered narrative.”
– Joshua Brunsting, Criterion Cast
DRIVER is a Goldfish Films production. Nesa Azimi is the director. The producers are Azimi, Nicolas Borel, and Ines Hofmann Kanna. The screenwriters and editors are Nesa Azimi and Nicolas Borel. Qutaiba Barhamji is the consulting editor. The Director of Photography is Carissa Henderson and Victor Tadashi Suárez, and Joel Van Haren is the cinematographer. Anne Balay is an advisor. Ethan Yake and Insiyah Haveliwala are the co-executive producers. The executive producers are Maxyne Franklin, and Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary.
Photos
Download DRIVER photos.
Credits
Director: Nesa Azimi
Producers: Nesa Azimi, Nicolas Borel, Ines Hofmann Kanna,
Cast/Participants: Desiree Wood, Michelle Kitchin, Idella Hansen, Debbie ‘Dingo’ Desiderato, Jess Graham, Brita Nowak, Michelle Scolari
Executive Producers: Maxyne Franklin, Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary
Co-Executive Producers: Ethan Yake, Insiyah Haveliwala
Editors: Nesa Azimi, Nicolas Borel
Screenwriters: Nesa Azimi, Nicolas Borel
Consulting Editor: Qutaiba Barhamji
Directors of Photography: Carissa Henderson, Víctor Tadashi Suárez
Cinematographer: Joel Van Haren
Advisor: Anne Balay
Language: English
Country: USA
Year: 2024
About the Filmmakers
Nesa Azimi - Director, Producer, Editor, Screenwriter, DRIVER
Nesa Azimi is a director, writer, producer and editor. She started out at The Maysles Documentary Center and has been on staff for Rain Media, PBS Frontline, Fault Lines on Al Jazeera, National Geographic, and the Ciné Institute of Haiti. Three films she helped produce for Frontline were recognized with Emmy® Awards. Her first feature documentary, DRIVER, about a long-haul trucker and her community of women drivers, premiered at the Tribeca Festival in 2024 and went on to screen at over thirty festivals. Nesa is a past fellow with the Sundance Institute, NYFA, Firelight Documentary Lab, and the Points North Institute. Her work has been supported by Catapult Film Fund, Doc Society, Tribeca Film Institute, the International Documentary Association, SFFILM Fund, and more.
Nicolas Borel - Producer, Screenwriter, Editor, DRIVER
Nicolas Borel is an artist, designer, and educator based in New York City and Istanbul. He graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and teaches at The New School and Pratt Institute in New York.
Ines Hofmann Kanna - Producer, DRIVER
Ines Hofmann Kanna is an independent documentary producer with
over 25 years of industry experience.
Among her producing credits are Sonia Kennebeck’s Emmy®-nominated National Bird (Berlinale 2016,) Enemies of the State (TIFF 2020,) and Reality Winner (2023), Cecilia Aldarondo’s Landfall (Tribeca 2020) and You Were My First Boyfriend (SXSW 2023) and Nesa Azimi’s DRIVER (Tribeca 2024.) Ines began her career at Boston’s PBS station WGBH, where she worked on the hit series Antiques Roadshow for ten years. As a freelancer, she filmed in places as close as Iowa and as far as Saudi Arabia for a variety of television programs. She also worked as Supervising Producer for ITVS, where she guided more than thirty filmmakers from production to broadcast, and continues to consult on feature documentaries.
About
About POV
Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. The series is known for introducing generations of viewers to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied (1989), Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1992), Rabbit in the Room (1999), Of Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (2001), Made in L.A. (2007), American Promise (2013), Not Going Quietly (2021), While We Watched (2022), A House Made of Splinters (2022), The Last Out (2023) and the mini-series And She Could be Next (2020). Throughout its history POV has featured the work of award-winning, innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Laura Poitras, Nanfu Wang, Frederick Wiseman, Emiko Omori, Janus Metz Pedersen and Ava DuVernay. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. In 2024, Indiewire named seven POV films in its roundup of “The 50 Best Documentaries of the 21st Century”: Faya Dayi (2021), The Mole Agent (2020), Minding The Gap (2018), Cameraperson (2016), The Look of Silence (2015), The Act of Killing (2013) and After Tiller (2013). All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.
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POV films and projects have won 48 Emmy® Awards, 28 George Foster Peabody Awards, 16 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on social media.
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American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia organization dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.
Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Acton Family Giving, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.
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