News

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Rick will be filming the English railway expert Jon Worth on his record-setting longest train journey in the European Union. Jon and Rick will depart from Kemijärvi, Finland on September 7th. If all goes well, they will arrive in Lagos, Portugal on September 11th, after approximately 100 hours of traveling. Read more about Jon and Rick's journey and follow it live here. The video will be published on the YouTube channel Simply Railway. The photo shows Rick and Jon near the starting point in Kemijärvi, Finland, only 80 km from the Russian border.

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With great sadness we mourn the death of Rik Thomas, a beloved member of the legendary Ozarks Mountain band Big Smith, the stars of Rick's 2005 feature documentary Homemade Hillbilly Jam. Read more in Rick's newsletter, where you can also find a link to watch the film for free.

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Rick will be screening his 1996 short film The Book of Lenins and showing excerpts from his work-in-progress Searching for Lenin's Head at the Medical History Museum in Hamburg. The presentation begins at 6 p.m. on January 21, 2026, and is free and open to the public. It concludes the year-long exhibition Lenins Tod. Eine Sektion – a multi-faceted analysis of Lenin's death, his brain, and the treatment he received by the Hamburg neurologist Max Nonne during the last years of his life. The museum is located at Martinistr. 52, 20246 Hamburg in building N30.

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Netflix Junkie just recommended Forgetting Dad. The reviewer Ipshita Chakraborty writes: "Some stories not only provoke thoughts but also preserve the introspective pain of loss and oblivion. Forgetting Dad is one such story that invites audiences into a narrative wash of memory, identity, and time as one man's life was turned around in an accident. For this 2008 documentary, that is not just backstory but an emotional heft still resonating in the streaming era of 2025." It's great to see that such an "old" film is still reaching new audiences.

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Head "Strait Guy" George Koumal always dreamed that his passion project to link Asia and North America via the world's longest train tunnel under the Bering Strait would one day go viral. Now it has. Last Friday, Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin's investment envoy and head of Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund tweeted about the tunnel, and suggested that Elon Musk's The Boring Company should build it. The post also included a photograph of a drawing of the proposed link from Kennedy and Khrushchev's discussions about it during the 1960s. Immediately, Reuters picked up the story, which quickly made its way around the

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Elena de Varda, the CEO of the Italian film production company Filmlux, recently interviewed me for the company's YouTube Channel. Elena and I met this past May at the Cannes Film Festival, and I have been helping her a bit with her ambitious new film "Canaletto, the Fabulous Journey", which she will partially shoot here in Germany in and around Dresden. In our conversation, I talk about my two most recent film The Presidents' Tailor and The Strait Guys, both of which are available at the links above. Enjoy!

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We are thrilled to announce that The Strait Guys is one of only thirty films selected for the launch of the new filmmaker-friendly VOD platform Olyn. Through Olyn's affiliate program, you can become a Strait Guys ambassador and earn a 20% commission ($2!) on every purchase made through your unique link. So help us share the Strait Guys' vision of connecting the world by rail and sign up here today!