KVIFF 2025: ‘Trains’ Doc is an Entrancing Journey Through History
by Alex Billington
July 8, 2025
Trains is “a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies.” One of my favorite parts about the Karlovy Vary Film Festival held in Czechia is that I sometimes get to walk in and watch some particularly obscure, one-of-a-kind, extremely niche films. This year’s intriguing one-of-a-kind discovery is a Polish documentary film titled Trains, also known as Pociagi in Polish, made by Polish filmmaker Maciej Drygas. Years ago at KVIFF (as the festival is known), I caught a documentary film titled simply Star (more info on the film here). The mesmerizing doc is entirely made up of nothing but shots of only the stars borrowed from hundreds movies throughout cinema history. It was a breathtaking cinematic experience, entirely unique, and I knew the minute it was over that I would never be able to find this film again. Trains is similar – it’s another breathtaking cinematic experience, made up of nothing but shots of train footage from the beginning of the 20th century. However, I came out of the film at KVIFF this year more depressed than I did emerging from Star years ago – because it’s about the Holocaust.
As a lover of the cinematic experience, I will say that Trains is an engaging and fascinating film to watch – especially on the big screen, especially at a festival with a crowd, especially when you’re wide awake and can properly appreciate the experience. Created from the premise that Polish people don’t really like trains (for obvious reasons related to the Holocaust) this film visualizes exactly why. No need to use words to explain – it’s all there in the footage. Maciej Drygas’s Trains is a thoroughly entrancing dialogue-free B&W cinematic creation built entirely from archival footage & old films showing how the great 20th century train expansion eventually played a key part in the Holocaust and Nazi Germany’s reign, before the war came to an end. The film opens with a Kafka quote, which makes one consider whether humanity’s desire to use technology for powerful dominance has actually come to an end… or not. The film never progresses beyond the 1950s, even though I would’ve happily sat and watched another hour as it pushes into modern times with trains evolving in incredible ways. But that’s not the story Drygas is telling here. It seems he wants us to notice how quickly things can change by exploring this footage of trains & humans riding trains & humans building trains, etc.
The film starts out incredibly bleak and never lets up because from the first frame there’s an ominous score. It haunting score remains consistent throughout, hinting that something bad is coming down the line, and it arrives at that horrible station eventually. Unfortunately this negativity and heaviness never lets the film have a chance to express anything more, or allow viewers to examine any other intriguing aspects of railway history. Instead, it’s entirely focused on the doom that is come during WWII & the Holocaust. Which makes it a bit more narrow-focused than its title Trains leads on. Ultimately the film is not so much about trains, per se, as it is about the idea that all great technological innovation will eventually be used by humanity for great evil and destruction. Sad yet irrefutably true. (Yes, even with the internet, look at what is happening nowadays…) The film is quite powerful and gripping in this way, however not as strong as an examination of trains and how they’ve shaped humanity or even their place in cinema history. It doesn’t need narration or dialogue, but I did want to see more thoughtfulness with all the footage as it is presented to us. There’s more to trains and how they have helped shape civilization than just their involvement in such terrible atrocities.
Alex’s KVIFF 2025 Rating: 8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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