There is a charming road movie on Arte called “The Little Brother” (Tajikistan, 1991), made at a particular moment in history, between the Soviet Union’s dissolution and the Tajik Civil War. It is about a seventeen-year-old who would like to leave home, but can’t because he is responsible for his seven-year-old brother. He wants his father, who lives in the countryside, to take responsibility for the kid once more, but that doesn’t work out.

The black-and-white film centers on a trip to their father’s place. They get there and back on a small freight train, whose driver takes on the occasional passenger and parcel via a barter system. Viewers get to experience the Tajik landscape and moments of rural life from the moving train. Sometimes the train stops, affording encounters with other people. The accompanying soundtrack is fantastic.

The brothers' heads poking out of the locomotive, smiling, as they look down at something from the moving train.
View of the small train from behind on a single-track line through the countryside. Smoke is coming out of it.