After Train Dreams won the big prize of best feature at the end of the 2026 Film Independent Spirit Awards on Sunday, director and co-writer Clint Bentley said the film represents “all the small lives that keep the world going.”
“I’m speaking on behalf of these incredible people who worked very, very hard on this film, sometimes, in the case of some of them, for many, many years before I even came on to it,” Bentley said. “And we’re so grateful to Netflix. We’re so grateful to you, the film independent community, as we share this with our entire crew, a lot of whom are in Washington state. It’s very, very hard these days to film in the United States, but it’s worth it, and we’re proud that we were able to pull it off. This film is about all the small lives that keep the world going, the people who don’t always get movies made about them, that don’t have monuments made for them. This is celebration of that. Thank you, Joel [Edgerton], for being the heartbeat of our film.”
Train Dreams was co-written by Bentley and Greg Kwedar and stars Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon and William H. Macy. It follows the life of Robert Grainier, an early 20th-century logger in the Pacific Northwest, and is based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name.
The other nominees in the category were Sorry, Baby, The Plague, Twinless and Peter Hujar’s Day. At the Spirit Awards, Train Dreams was also nominated for best director (which it won), best lead performance (Edgerton) and best cinematography, which it also won. It is also up for four Academy Awards, including best picture.
For a full list of winners, click here. You can also see the star-studded arrivals here.
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