TRAINS is a “found-footage” documentary consisting of solely archival materials, which creates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies. A train compartment is a place where, for a while, people are taken out of their everyday context. For a few hours or days, they inhabit a temporary community, and their lives unfold according to a timetable. A train journey is something beautiful, magical, but also often very dramatic. Sometimes, the journey is accompanied by the hope that something will change in our lives upon reaching the destination, or conversely, by a stark absence of hope. And yet the history of the world unfolds in railway carriages in repeating refrain. Every few years, hauntingly similar scenes occur at railway stations worldwide: carriages filled with men going off to war, only to return wounded or as casualties. This cycle is followed by an exodus of civilians, evacuees mingling with prisoners of war returning from camps, and soldiers of victorious armies leading the defeated, until ordinary passengers once again appear at the stations. TRAINS is an artistic endeavor to explore new possibilities in expanding the language of Cinema and to rebuild the emotional connection between the viewer and archival reality. TRAINS is a documentary crafted in the found footage genre, using archival film materials from 46 archives around the world. One of the most significant and timeconsuming challenges was finding a common thread to unify sequences to be edited from materials created in different eras and technologies (the oldest unique archival footage dates back to the early 20th century). The narration of this wordless film relies on the interplay between visuals and a highly developed sound design. This film harnesses the vast potential of cinematic language to forge an emotional connection between the viewer and the archival reality.
- IDFA Award for Best Film in the International Competition
- IDFA Award for Best Editing in the International Competition
