About the title
Life begins with cinema: as the starting point of his autobiography, Steven Spielberg chooses a snowy January of 1952 and a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth." And cinema always begins with a train — if you don't believe it, ask the Lumière brothers or Edwin S. Porter. Can one exist without the other? That evening it became clear forever to little Sammy-Steven (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) that it cannot. He wants to carry the magic of cinema home in his pocket, keep its projection in the palm of his hand, show it to his mother again and again, and not let the waking dream evaporate after he wakes up. But magic doesn't create itself: Hanukkah is coming soon, which means he can ask for a toy train set as a gift and try to recreate the irreversible collision he saw in the movie theater.