In Yugoslavia in 1947, 211,000 of the country’s young people, joined by 5,735 from abroad, worked with great enthusiasm building the 242 kilometer railroad between Sarajevo and Šamac. A newsreel from the period shows them toiling away with spades, pickaxes and shovels to complete the job in just seven months. Newsreel 242—Sunny Railways is both a tribute to these idealistic young people and an elegy for the loss of hope for a better world.

“The visions of the future suffocated in the rivers of blood and mass graves,” we hear in voice-over, referring to the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia and to a broader context. The railroad, laid over the rubble of the Second World War, damaged during the Bosnian war, and neglected in the new millennium now looks like the ruins of some ancient civilization.

This documentary essay argues that the story of the railroad harbors enduring ideas for a world beyond capitalism, and that we must rediscover the values of times past.