THIS TRAIN I RIDE
A film by Arno Bitschy
2019, 77 minutes
2019, 77 minutes
No. 389
Documentary
Documentary
Description
The United States. Today. A freight train crosses the landscape like a giant steel snake ripping through the silence. One day, three women left everything behind to defy danger and cross the country on board freight trains. They wait for them, hiding in the bushes, sleeping under highway bridges.
Christina, 30, is a welder in a factory in Wisconsin; a vocation that came to her when she was traveling alone on the railroad. The contact with steel helped her reconcile her addiction for freight-train travel and a „normal“ life.
Karen, 20, a solitary, tormented soul, lives the life of a hobo, a vagabond. She hops from train to train, with no particular destination.
The train is like a therapy, to give her self-confidence. On her travels, she falls in love and finds a job. She plans to hang in there and settle down somewhere. Another leap into the unknown.
Ivy, 40, ran away from home as a teenager and crisscrossed the country for years on freight trains; an experience which has deeply influenced her. Today, she lives in San Francisco and runs an art therapy workshop for homeless women and sings in a punk band. She is trying to preserve the islands of counter-culture in part of the city which has been turned into a chic suburb of Silicon Valley. But her biggest desire is to hit the road again, to hop a train and rediscover the ultimate sensation of freedom.
Amid the grinding and screeching of the metal beast, the director becomes these women’s traveling companion. Their trajectories cross and echo each other: a desire to live, a spiritual quest, eternal rebellion.
They are stronger than society; they are stronger than men; they are free.
Christina, 30, is a welder in a factory in Wisconsin; a vocation that came to her when she was traveling alone on the railroad. The contact with steel helped her reconcile her addiction for freight-train travel and a „normal“ life.
Karen, 20, a solitary, tormented soul, lives the life of a hobo, a vagabond. She hops from train to train, with no particular destination.
The train is like a therapy, to give her self-confidence. On her travels, she falls in love and finds a job. She plans to hang in there and settle down somewhere. Another leap into the unknown.
Ivy, 40, ran away from home as a teenager and crisscrossed the country for years on freight trains; an experience which has deeply influenced her. Today, she lives in San Francisco and runs an art therapy workshop for homeless women and sings in a punk band. She is trying to preserve the islands of counter-culture in part of the city which has been turned into a chic suburb of Silicon Valley. But her biggest desire is to hit the road again, to hop a train and rediscover the ultimate sensation of freedom.
Amid the grinding and screeching of the metal beast, the director becomes these women’s traveling companion. Their trajectories cross and echo each other: a desire to live, a spiritual quest, eternal rebellion.
They are stronger than society; they are stronger than men; they are free.
Festivals
Official Selection, Helsinki International Film Festival
Official Selection, One World Prague
Official Selection, DOK.fest Munich
