Lost Transport

Spring 1945: Shortly before the end of the war, a deportation train bound for Theresienstadt with over two thousand Jewish concentration camp prisoners strands in the middle of a pasture. The train driver uncouples the locomotive and flees with the other German soldiers from the Red Army, which has already occupied the nearby German village of Tröbitz. The starving people on the train are left to fend for themselves and rely on help from the village. When typhus breaks out, Tröbitz is quarantined by the Russian occupation forces—no one can get in, no one can get out. In this desperate situation, full of mistrust and a desire for revenge, an unexpected friendship develops between Simone (Hanna van Vliet), a Jewish Dutch woman, Winnie (Anna Bachmann), a young German woman, and Vera (Eugénie Anselin), a Russian sniper. In her haunting war drama, director Saskia Diesing focuses less on the major historical events and more on the human relationships in the chaos of the last days of the war. Based on real events involving a deportation train stranded in Brandenburg, a sensitive picture of female solidarity between three very different women is painted. The empathetic drama is particularly convincing thanks to its calm staging and strong performances, which credibly convey mistrust, fear, and the gradual emergence of compassion.