THE IRON MINISTRY

China’s railways traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, language and gesture. Fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines come together on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.

J.P. Sniadecki’s absorbing documentary appears to consist of one train trip, but the director spent three years shooting throughout China’s railway system. The result is a richly textured work of ethnographic filmmaking that offers expansive implications about class and the nation’s economic boom.