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Le Train

Le Train is the true story of the return by train to Paris of the first 300 French women liberated from the Nazis’ Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, told mainly through the eyes of legendary New Yorker magazine writer and Paris correspondent Janet Flanner (“Genêt”). Her “Letter From Paris” column ran for half a century, and she was there at the Gare de Lyon with Gen. Charles de Gaulle, whose niece, a member of the French Resistance, he hoped was on that train. Historical “cameos” include Ernest Hemingway; Jean-Paul Sartre; Simone de Beauvoir; Albert Camus; Gen. Charles de Gaulle and his niece; three professional executioners (two hangmen and a guillotiner); a bunch of Nazis tried and executed after the Nuremburg and Hamelin War Crimes trials; Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas; Sylvia Beach; Natalie Barney; and Djuna Barnes, among others. Major scenes take place all over pre-war and wartime Paris; Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps; and the war crimes courtrooms and executions of several dozen Nazis. The central part of the story concerns the journey of the 300 women and their Canadian POW convoy from Ravensbrück to Paris. Eleven of the 300 women died en route.

Written by:
Format:
Screenplay
Genres:
Posted:
12/13/2020
Updated:
01/27/2021
Author Bio:
Curmudeonly 74-year-old ink-stained wretch (imagine, if you dare, Wilford Brimley and Lou Grant having a love child), paid professional writer more or less continuously since 1962, paid professional editor since 1966, about three decades or so in newspapers, with some lacunae and journeys into the Dark Side (politics, advertising, catalog writing, retail sales and, for the last 16 years, chief copy editor for the behavioral Division of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [contractor, not an actual Fed]).

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Contest Results:
LGBTQ Screenwriting (Quarterfinalist) [2020]
Miami Screenplay Awards (Quarterfinalist) [2021]
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