CPOY

CPOY 76 Documentary Award of Experience: Riders of Freedom

A long train whistle blows in the distance and our freight train starts gradually speeding up. As soon as we leave the station, the guys saddle up the walls of the open wagon. I think about the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. If there were horsemen of Freedom, train hoppers would definitely be among them. Trainsurfing, train hopping, freight hopping — riding the outside of the train has a lot of names and a lot of different branches. Some people ride on suburban trains, some cling to inter-city trains and even high-speed ones, some are particularly interested in subway. Riders of Freedom is a project about freight train travelers. Through seven trips with them, I drove 3870 km, visited St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Bryansk, Orel, Pskov and even reached the Barents Sea.

Caption
Slide 4 of 12
July 12, 2021
Zhenya's (not the real name) toe tips on the right foot were smashed by the wheels of a high speed train «Sapsan». During an unsuccessful attempt to hop the train, he fell on the tracks and wasn't fast enough to crawl away.
Artem Puchkov / DocDocDoc
Location
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