Opening with Franz Kafka’s quote, “There is hope, an infinite amount of hope... but not for us,” Trains takes viewers on a journey through 20th-century film chronicles, revealing a collective portrait of postwar Europe – its progress and its tragedies. Locomotives, at first symbols of human engineering achievement, soon become terrifying machines of war. The faces of victims and migrants evoke the eternal cycle of joy and destruction, while the camera, fixed on the tracks, seems to ask: which path will humanity choose today? This silent film by Polish documentary master and Łódź Film School professor Maciej Drygas, which will close Scanorama, won the top prize at the prestigious IDFA in Amsterdam. The soundtrack prominently features the voice of Lithuanian sound artist Saulius Urbonavičius. For the film‘s creators, the train itself becomes a living being – absorbing, bearing witness to, and speaking of countless human destinies.
