Wholetrain

Florian Gaag's film looks at the German graffiti scene from the inside. Four young writers, caught in the competition to get their names up, face one decision: to paint an entire train end to end. What interests the film is less the pieces themselves than the rules of that world, who has claim to which wall, the scores kept with rival crews, the way friendship and rivalry run at the same time, and what the risk of being caught does to everyone. Gaag shoots it neither in the language of a crime report nor as an advertisement; he teaches no technique and declares nobody a hero. The trains and the yards are the real locations, and nobody's life is where it started by the end.