TRAINS is a "found-footage" documentary consisting of solely flm archival materials, whichcreates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing theirhopes, 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 flled 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.