Train Robbers
2019 · 20m · Norway
Directed by Martin A. Walther
Genres: coming-of-age, crime, documentary
Tones: humorous, melancholic, tender
A retrospective documentary about the 11-to-15-year-olds who stole beer and soda from freight trains in 1990s Trondheim — and the children society let down.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a heist doc to fetishize the crime or moralize about it—Walther does neither, which is exactly why it works, but honestly it's a bit too tender for my taste when it could've gone weirder.
A formally restrained documentary that inherits the sociological rigor of Nordic nonfiction while resisting sentimentality; the structure—children's voices layered against archival material—positions this squarely in a lineage of craft-conscious coming-of-age cinema.
The decision to let the actual kids narrate their own story in retrospect, their adult voices carrying the weight of what they were—that single structural choice transforms what could've been a crime curiosity into something genuinely aching about complicity and abandonment.