The Marché du Film screening of The Train on May 16 confirmed something the industry chatter had been hinting at for weeks. Boris Volodarsky‘s espionage thriller, produced by Dennis Dewall, is one of the more confident European genre entries of the year. It’s stylish without being precious, tense without being exhausting, and it understands exactly what a confined-space thriller is supposed to do.
The film unfolds aboard the Majestic Imperator Train de Luxe as it travels from Vienna toward Prague. From the opening scenes, the train operates as both setting and slow-tightening vise. Polished wood interiors, crystal glassware, and a cast of well-dressed passengers create an old-world glamour that gradually curdles into paranoia. Volodarsky lets the tension build compartment by compartment rather than rushing toward set pieces, and the patience pays off. By the time the violence arrives, it feels earned rather than scheduled.
Dennis Dewall anchors the film as Major Alex Stirling with the kind of restraint that’s become rare in action leads. He’s not posturing or shouting his way through scenes. He’s watching, calculating, waiting for the moment he can no longer afford to. His commitment to practical stunt work registers clearly on screen, particularly in the train-set action sequences where the absence of digital shortcuts gives every impact a real weight. The performance lands because Dewall trusts the material to do the work.
His scenes with Anouk Auer, who plays his teenage daughter Olivia, give the film its emotional foundation. Auer avoids the standard movie-kid trap. Olivia has presence and personality, and her relationship with Stirling feels like an actual relationship rather than a plot device waiting to be activated. When the threats close in, the stakes feel personal because the family dynamic was established with care.
The standout performance, though, belongs to Madalina Bellariu Ion as Natalie Krug. The Russian operative could have collapsed into a familiar femme fatale archetype, but Bellariu Ion plays her as someone who’s smarter than everyone around her and entirely aware of it. Every scene she’s in operates as a small negotiation of power. She doesn’t have to announce the character’s danger because it’s already legible in the way she moves through the train. It’s the kind of performance that gets remembered after a festival screening, and the room reacted accordingly.
The supporting cast holds its own. Martin Ploderer brings quiet authority to Leo Goldberg, the train’s owner. Peter Ormond, Alan Burgon, and Polina Kuleshova all register in roles that could have been functional but feel fully inhabited. The ensemble work gives the train a populated, lived-in quality that makes the eventual chaos hit harder.
Visually, The Train moves confidently between European elegance and tighter, more claustrophobic compositions as the threats escalate. The cinematography knows when to lean into the glamour and when to strip it away for something more clinical. Ali Kabalan‘s fight choreography prioritizes efficiency over flash, blending Wing Chun and Wushu into sequences that feel brutal and quick, the way professionals would actually fight in a tight train corridor. The action doesn’t dominate the film. It punctuates it.
What separates The Train from most contemporary spy entries is its credibility. Volodarsky’s background as a writer on real intelligence operations and real-world assassinations gives the screenplay a texture that’s hard to fake. Things happen because they would, not because the plot demands them. The tradecraft feels accurate, the violence feels consequential, and the political stakes never tip into cartoon territory. It’s a thriller that respects its audience’s intelligence, which is increasingly the exception rather than the rule.
The Marché du Film audience responded to what’s clearly there. The Train isn’t chasing the Bond formula or borrowing from Bourne. It’s a self-contained thriller with the confidence to slow down when slowing down serves the story and the discipline to keep its action grounded when action is required. The international scope feels earned rather than performed, and the practical approach to filmmaking gives the whole project a texture that pure spectacle pieces can’t replicate.
The Train proves the confined-space thriller still has track left, and coming out of the screening, it looks like a film that knows exactly what it is. That’s rarer than it should be, and it’s the reason this one will be worth tracking through its September release in Germany and Austria and the wider rollout that follows. More on the film is available on IMDB.
