The Iron Ministry

THE IRON MINISTRY, shot over three years during a series of train journeys across China, begins with metal: the sounds and sights of gears, wheels on tracks and linked railway cars meshing, crunching, and grinding. We are gradually introduced to the people who ride and work on the cars, with their luggage, their produce, the products they’re hawking, the goods they’re transporting. People are crammed into every corner of every train car, with the exception of a first-class compartment from which the filmmaker is barred. At one point, J.P. Sniadecki follows a food vendor from one end of a train to another, as he nonchalantly makes his way through a sea of humanity so thick and ungainly that the very idea of negotiating it seems impossible. Little by little, the passengers begin to speak about their country, their lives, their dreams for the future.
(New York Film Festival)

In the presence of J.P. Sniadecki.