Cuban director Marcelo Martin's first feature-length documentary takes him on a single-wagon train from Moron to Punta Alegre in the province of Ciego de Avila in central Cuba. Halfway through, he stops in Falla, where he spent summer vacations as a child. What remains from the memories of his youth amounts to a rude awakening. Martin pulls no punches yet is clearly endowed with a painterly eye, and his first-person chronicle of broken dreams, promises, and lives is leavened by a vision as poetic as it is stark. The Train on the Northern Railway bears witness to a forgotten Cuba.
