The Railway
ORIGINAL TITLE: JELEZNAYA DOROGA
Russia, 105 min, road-movie, color, 35mm
CATEGORY: Comedy
COUNTRY: Russia
PRODUCTION : 29th February Film Company
SYNOPSIS
An art house movie tells about the search of love and happiness. A school principal and his friend hijack an old steam locomotive and start a travel along the abandoned railroad – to deal in coal. The film plot is seemingly simple: two friends (a school principal Parentsov and a truck driver who is referred to as Father) steal a large amount of coal and take it by an old abandoned rail into the vast borderless steppe where they want to sell it. Driver’s numb son Misha and a strange and formidable being, Engine Driver, accompany them. The story of a huge locomotive that the group uses for transporting the coal runs parallel to the main plot line. The locomotive was once called Tsar the Vampire and represented a symbol of enormous power that could be compared with the energy of the whole great world. Later it was turned into a museum exhibit. And now it serves as a transport means for the stolen coal. The third line is dedicated to a travelling circus that disappeared several years earlier while touring the neighbourhood. Members of the circus troupe got adjusted to living in the wilderness, and our heroes keep running into the former circus workers – clowns, acrobats and circus staff – as they ride across the steppe. However, we can only recognize their circus identity by a certain theatricality in their behaviour, as they have neither circus garments no red noses. But, after all, the stolen coal story, the Soviet-spirit fantasy and the story of the Wild Circus are nothing but a background for the core idea of the plot: to show how Father leaves a passion-led life behind and, having gone to the end the long Way of Forgiveness, finally finds happiness for himself and his son Misha…
CAST
Sergey Belyaev, Viktor Terelya, Olga Degtyaryova, Daniil Shavkunov, Pyotr Zaychenko
CREW
Director : Alexey Fedorchenko
Screenplay : Aleksandr Gonorovskiy
Producers : Dmitri Vorobyov, Aleksey Fedorchenko
Category:
Narrative Feature