Circulation: Observations from Kyiv’s ‘Ghost Train’

Opened in 2009, Kyiv’s Urban Electric Train or “electrychka” makes continuous circuits of the city, crossing the Dnipro river twice. But underfunded and frequently delayed, the train is unpopular with locals. While it can be crowded in the morning and evening, the train attracts few passengers, leading it to be dubbed the “ghost train.”

“Personally, I don’t use Kyiv’s electrychka and during our filming process I got the impression that almost no one is using it either”, says Oleksiy Radynski, the Ukrainian filmmaker, who’s latest production, Circulation, was filmed from the windows of Kyiv’s electrychka, which snakes through the city’s outlying districts. The film was presented at 17th Docudays UA film festival where it has won the Special Mention Award.

Radynski’s film is a raw visual narration of the disorderly changes to Kyiv’s urban landscape. “Since the infrastructure in our city is catastrophic – it decisively does not fulfill its immediate functions, I came up with the idea to use it for a non-intended purpose,” he explained. “Thus, a non-functional “electrychka” has become a cinematic dolly, that is, a tool for moving the camera around the urban landscape. Perhaps, it became the longest dolly in history, its length was 50.8 kilometers.”