Still Life + Train-Trains #2: A Bypass

Director: Rania Stephan, Sohrab Shahid Saless

1974 / 123min / DCP

A program of two formally adventurous trainspotting films from the Middle East. Stephan’s memory piece Train-Trains #2: Bypass follows the weed-choked rails of a former train line, an extension of the Orient Express that once linked Lebanon to Palestine, which lives on in the memories of those who reside near its long-abandoned stations; Saless’s Still Life, a key film of the early Iranian New Wave and winner of the Silver Bear at the 24th Berlin International Film Festival, observes the daily lives of a longtime crossing guard (Zadour Bonyadi) at a remote train station and his wife, whose well-worn routine will be upended by an unexpected development.

Train-Trains #2: A Bypass (Rania Stephan, 2017, 30 mins)

Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974, 93 mins)

Part of Trains: Long Distance Passages