This Train I Ride

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 arttherapy 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.

Trailer

Details

Country of Production
France, Finland

Year of Production
2019

Format
HD, DCP

Length
77 min

Director
Arno Bitschy

Production
Les films du balibari in co-production with napafilms, Arte G.E.I.E., YLE, Lyon Capitale TV

Original Language
English

Subtitles
English

Festivals / Awards

Helsinki IFF "Love & Anarchy" 2019
One World Prague 2020
DOK.fest Munich @home 2020
Biografilm 2020
EIDF 2020
Docs Against Gravity 2020
La Roche-sur-Yon IFF 2020
Qara IDF 2021