Train of Life
Train of Life (in French Train de vie; in Romanian Trenul vieţii) is a 1998 tragicomedy film by France, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel and Romania made in the French language. It tells the story of an eastern European Jewish village's plan to escape the Holocaust.
Plot
The film starts off with a man, named Schlomo (Lionel Abelanski), running crazily through a forest, with his voice playing in the background, saying that he has seen the horror of the Nazis in a nearby town, and he must tell the others. Once he gets into town, he informs the rabbi, and together they run through the town and once they have got enough people together, they hold a town meeting. At first, many of the men do not believe the horrors they are being told, and many criticize Schlomo, for he is the town lunatic, and who could possibly believe him? But the rabbi believes him, and then they try to tackle the problem of the coming terrors. Amidst the pondering and the arguing, Schlomo suggests that they build a train, so they can escape by deporting themselves. Some of their members pretend to be Nazis in order to ostensibly transport them to a concentration camp, when in reality, they are going to Palestine via Russia. Thus the Train of Life is born.
More details
| author | Moni Ovadia Radu Mihăileanu |
|---|---|
| contentLocation | Central Europe |
| director | Radu Mihăileanu |
| editor | Monique Rysselinck |
| events | Aliyah emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe The Holocaust World War II |
| genre | comedy-drama |
| keywords | barbed wire concentration camp eastern europe film star meet nazi nu palestine rabbi rom romani people run shtetl soviet union town meeting voice |
| musicBy | Goran Bregović |
| recordedAt | Bucharest |
| theme | black comedy dance tragicomedy transport war |