No Trains No Planes

The kindest film by Dutch classic Jos Stelling is intimate, conversational, in the spirit of sad clowning.

A middle-aged man arrives at a train station café with a small suitcase. He comes to say goodbye: the protagonist is about to embark on a long journey. People of varying degrees of eccentricity appear and disappear in the café, some familiar to him and others completely unknown. However, sometimes the most unfamiliar turn out to be the closest, and the closest are strangers. In the face of his imminent departure, the only connection that truly matters is love, which ultimately saves no one.

The meeting will be hosted by philosopher and film scholar (and co-founder of the cinema) Varya Vlasova.

Varya: "This is one of those films that was important to me in my twenties but I haven't revisited since. Returning to something like this is always a risk and not always necessary, but with 'Alienation,' for example, in one of our recent meetings, it turned out wonderfully: it felt like I was meeting an old friend, whose nuances I now perceive differently, but the essence—the feeling of deep connection—remains unchanged."