“TRAINS” NOMINATED FOR FOCAL AWARD
Created using archival footage, the documentary directed by Maciej Drygas has been recognised by the prestigious FOCAL International panel.
The FOCAL International Awards are prestigious accolades presented annually by FOCAL International, an association representing companies and individuals specialising in the use of archival materials in media production. The competition celebrates and promotes exceptional use of archival footage across diverse productions, from fiction films and documentaries to advertisements and TV programming. The awards also include categories that honour projects related to restoring and preserving of film archives, which emphasises their significance in safeguarding cultural heritage. The awards ceremony is held annually in London and marks a significant event for professionals in the audiovisual archives industry.
Maciej Drygas's documentary has received a nomination in the Best Use of Footage in a History Feature category. Trains opens with a quote from Franz Kafka: “There is hope, infinite hope – just not for us.” These words hover like a dark cloud over this found-footage documentary, which creates a collective portrait of people in 20th-century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies. Powerful scenes showing the assembly of steam locomotives and railway carriages appear to celebrate human ingenuity and labour. People dressed in their finest clothes embark on railway journeys. But these joyful images soon give way to military transport: soldiers being deployed to the front line – quickly followed by civilian evacuations, processions of ragged prisoners of war and amputee soldiers. Times change, but the pattern keeps repeating. The archival footage in this silent film evokes an inevitable sense of a cycle of joy and destruction, beauty and bitterness. The image of tangled railway tracks and switches raises the question: which route is humanity going to choose?
The complete list of all nominated films can be found here.