Trains

Director Maciej Drygas in person for Q&A!

“A magnetic cine-essay… surveying the sweeping changes ushered in by the steam age.” — The Guardian

“This is not a film about trains, but a metaphor for life—a rare achievement in cinema.” — Inertia Film

TRAINS is a found-footage documentary composed entirely of archival materials, creating a collective portrait of people in 20th-century Europe—capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies.

A train compartment is a space where people are temporarily removed from their everyday lives. For a few hours or days, they form a fleeting community, their experiences unfolding according to a timetable. A train journey can be beautiful and magical, but also deeply dramatic—sometimes filled with hope for change, and at other times marked by a stark absence of it.

Throughout history, similar scenes repeat themselves in railway carriages: soldiers departing for war and returning wounded—or not at all—followed by waves of civilians, evacuees, prisoners of war, and the aftermath of conflict. Eventually, these moments give way once again to ordinary travel, until the cycle repeats.

TRAINS is an artistic exploration that expands the language of cinema while rebuilding the emotional connection between the viewer and archival reality.