Streaming now on Netflix, Train Dreams emerges as arguably the most visually stunning and emotionally resonant film of 2025.

This cinematic masterpiece, adapted from Denis Johnson’s acclaimed 2011 novella, is brought to life by director Clint Bentley, who co-authored the screenplay with Greg Kwedar.

Joel Edgerton takes on the role of Robert Grainier, a reserved logger laboring on the railroads of the American West during the 1920s. Despite his reticent demeanor, he discovers love with Felicity Jones’s character and begins a serene and beautiful life. However, this tranquility is shattered by unforeseen tragedy. The film’s talented supporting cast features Clifton Collins Jr., Kerry Condon, and William H. Macy.

Train Dreams intricately traces Robert’s journey over several decades, capturing his life as a logger in the flourishing 1920s through to his elder years in the swiftly evolving 1960s.

The film’s richly detailed narrative has sparked curiosity among viewers, leading many to question: Is Train Dreams rooted in a true story?

Is Train Dreams based on a true story?

The Train Dreams movie is not based on a true story. Train Dreams is based on the award-winning 2011 novella by Denis Johnson of the same name, which also is not based on a true story. It is a made-up, fictional story about a made-up, fictional man named Robert Grainier. Robert Grainier is not based on a real person.

That said, author Denis Johnson, who died at age 67 in 2017, did set his story in a place where he really lived, at the time—in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, which is where Robert builds, and rebuilds, his cabin.

So, while writing the movie, filmmakers Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar went to stay in that area as well, to mimic that sense of authenticity to the place, if not the time period.

“We went up to the area where Denis Johnson had lived and where the story is set while we were writing, and stayed in a cabin along the Moyea river where Grainier would’ve lived,” Bentley said in an interview for the Train Dreams production notes. “We met loggers in that area and people whose parents and grandparents had been loggers. The Kootenai tribe there is reintroducing sturgeon into the rivers. It was a really unique writing process and really rewarding.”

While it’s true that the United States logging industry cut down many trees and built many railroads out West in the early 1900s, the specifics in Train Dreams are not based on any real-life logging or railing incidents. The bridge that Robert works on, for example, the Robinson Gorge Bridge, is not a real bridge, nor a real gorge, in Idaho.

So, no, Train Dreams is not based on a true story. But the fact that it feels like it could be speaks to the film’s success in telling an authentic, though fictional, story.