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Train Dreams, now streaming on Netflix, is widely regarded as one of the most visually stunning and emotionally resonant films of 2025.
The film brings to life the acclaimed 2011 novella by Denis Johnson through the vision of director Clint Bentley, who also collaborated on the screenplay with Greg Kwedar. Joel Edgerton takes on the role of Robert Grainier, a reserved logger working on the American West’s railroad during the 1920s. Although he is a man of few words, he finds love with a character played by Felicity Jones and begins a blissful, uncomplicated life with her—until misfortune strikes.
Spanning four decades of Robert’s life, the film is largely set against the backdrop of nature. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso masterfully captures the film’s stunning outdoor scenes, highlighting a poignant message: while the earth’s natural resources are breathtaking, they are finite, and humanity has exploited them excessively.
To authentically depict this natural beauty, Train Dreams was shot on location in the Pacific Northwest, the setting of the original novella. For more details on where Train Dreams was filmed, keep reading.
Where was the Train Dreams movie filmed?
The production took place primarily in Eastern Washington, with key locations including Metaline Falls, Colville, and downtown Spokane, as reported by the Spokesman-Review in 2024.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, director Clint Bentley revealed the scenes at a logging camp were filmed at a real, working logging camp, Webley Lumber yard, in Colville in Washington state. “[It’s] an actual logging operation that’s been in that family since the 1800s,” Bentley said. “They were super excited for us to film there, and all we did was move the modern equipment out and we had the shot.”
When it came to the sequences of cutting down trees, Bentley and his team had built their own trees to cut down.
“We did build trees,” Bentley said in an interview with Variety. “Our production designer, Alex Schaller, and her team — because we wanted to have some of these scenes where you can cut into a huge tree that just looks gargantuan. But you don’t want to cut down a huge tree. Morally, I could never cut into it.”
There were some instances of cutting down real tree, Bentley continued—but they made sure to only cut ones that were are planning to be cut by real loggers.
“Even the trees that are cut down in the film — those were just done in logging areas where they were already cutting down trees,” Bentley told Variety. “We said, ‘Can you show us what trees you’re going to cut down and then let us film that when you cut them?’”
In an upcoming interview with Decider, Bentley revealed that filming a movie almost entirely outdoors was no doubt challenging, but worth it.
“All of us, cast included, leaned into this approach,” Bentley told Decider. “We’re going to embrace the unknown and not look at it as a problem that we need to solve, but as something that’s giving us the answer that we don’t know yet. Something that we need to listen to, and then try and make something great out of it, and follow that. When Joel is trudging through the snow, and his character is trying to light a lantern, and he can’t because his fingers are so numb, that’s because Joel’s fingers are very numb from trudging in the snow. It just brought so much more than whatever difficulties we had.”