A train compartment is a place where people are taken out of their everyday context. 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. Every few years, hauntingly similar scenes play out in railway stations around the world: carriages full of men leaving for 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, until ordinary passengers reappear at stations. Trains is a found-footage documentary composed entirely of archive footage. It creates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, dramas and tragedies.
Poland, Lithuania 2024, '80
DIRECTOR: Maciej J. Drygas
SCENARIO: Maciej J. Drygas
MONTAGE: Rafal Listopad
PRODUCERS: Drygas Film Production, Vita Zelakeviciute
PRODUCTION: Era Film, Rasa Miskinyte
FESTIVALS & AWARDS:
IDFA: Best Film; Best Editing Award IDFA (2024)
Tallin Black Nights (2024)
Thessaloniki IFF (2024)
Trieste FF (2025)
Goteborg FF (2025)
Maciej J. Drygas
Maciej J. Drygas is a renowned film and radio director, screenwriter, producer, and professor at the Polish National Film School in Łódź. His works have received numerous prestigious awards, including the European Film Academy Award for Best Documentary for Hear My Cry (1991), the Prix Italia for the radio documentary Last Will (1992), the Grand Prix at the Monte Carlo International Television Festival for State of Weightlessness (1995), and the award for Best Feature-Length Documentary at the Cinema Verité festival in Tehran for Abu Haraz (2013). Drygas also wrote the libretto for the opera Qudsja Zaher, which was nominated for the International Opera Awards in London in 2014. He is the originator and founder of the Home Movie Archive at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw. His films and radio documentaries have been broadcast across Europe, as well as in Canada, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, New Caledonia, and Australia.
