He’s spent a lifetime trying to forget. Now he’s on a journey that won’t let him.
Trailer coming soon
Haunted by a past he cannot escape, Arthur finds himself at a train station where the boundaries between memory and reality begin to blur. As he embarks on a mysterious journey, fragments of a life filled with ambition, love, and regret begin to surface, drawing him toward a past that no amount of whiskey has ever managed to erase.
But where is this train taking him? And why does every mile forward seem to bring him closer to the very memories he has spent a lifetime trying to drown?
As Arthur struggles to understand the journey he has undertaken, he must confront a question that has haunted humanity for centuries: If you could go back and change the one moment that defined your life, would you?
And what if you couldn’t?
If you could go back to one moment, where would it be? Write it on a ticket that can never be used.
Whether as individuals or as a collective society, we are all passengers on a one-way train with no turning back.
As a software engineer, my daily life revolves around developing cutting-edge AI. Yet at a time when the tech industry is intoxicatingly obsessed with the “infinite possibilities” of tomorrow, I chose to walk backward, crafting One Way Train through traditional cinematic language. The film was born from a profound existential friction: in an unbridled race forward, what happens when we make mistakes that can never be debugged, undone, or redeemed?
Set against the frenzy of the 2000s dot-com bubble, a poignant mirror to our current AI fever, the film explores the brutal reality of irreversible choices. Through Arthur’s desperate, futile attempts to warn his younger self, I wanted to strip away the cinematic illusion of a “hero’s journey.” True redemption only comes from confronting our un-rewritable history and finding the courage to let go.
By manifesting the older Arthur as an unhoused man, invisible to the city he once sought to conquer, the film also asks us to recognize the complex tragedies hidden behind the time-worn faces on our streets. I made this film simply because I do not want to become Arthur. It is a plea to pause in a relentlessly rushing era.
Yuyao Zhong is a Seattle director, writer, musician and Nord Story Lab founder. An alumna of Columbia Engineering and UW Film, she balances her work as a software engineer and tech lead at Google with cinema. Driven by a desire for human connection, she engineers TV search features and creates stories for the screen, exploring profound moments in ordinary lives.
Arthur Pendleton / Homeless Man
Seattle actor Charles Leggett has performed at Intiman, Seattle Rep, ACT Theatre and Seattle Shakespeare Company, in roles including Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Lennie in Of Mice and Men and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He is a Gregory Award recipient, a 2022 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow and a two-time Stranger Genius Award nominee, and has narrated audiobooks including Kurt Andersen’s Heyday.
Margaret Pendleton
Seattle-based actor, voice actor and writer Geena Pietromonaco was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Her screen work includes Impenetrable, which she wrote and directed and which premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2023, along with Night Stand, Demon Girlz and Static in Bloom. The Inlander called her potentially “Seattle’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge.”
Young Arthur Pendleton
Lennon O’Flynn made his screen debut alongside Nathan Fielder in HBO’s The Rehearsal. In One Way Train he plays the young Arthur, at the very start of the journey.
Actor and filmmaker Curtis McGann has appeared in Rideshare (2018), Sacren (2019) and Second Chance (2025), which he also executive produced, and wrote the screenplay for The Red Nightmare (2021). His upcoming films include Hand of Satan and My Face.
Kelsi Umeko is a Japanese American actress who trained in Los Angeles. She was a series regular on REI’s Trailheads and Disney Babble’s Midnight Moms, was principal cast in The Look-See (2017), and wrote, produced and starred in the feature Sacren (2019).
Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and director Maria Gargiulo has made work for PBS, Fox, CBS and the Discovery Channel, including the narrative films The Collectors and Got 2 Come Up. A graduate of the American Film Institute and Stanford, and one of the first Nicholl Screenwriting Fellows, she designed and leads the University of Washington’s one-year film production program.
Cinematographer Theo Angell has spent 20 years shooting films everywhere from rural Ethiopia to the United States, working with actors including Paul Sorvino, Peter Fonda, Treat Williams, Christian Slater and Udo Kier. His work has screened on Showtime, Hallmark, Lifetime, PBS, SyFy and the Sundance Channel.
Seattle filmmaker Regan MacStravic has more than 38 camera and electrical credits, along with work in art direction, production design and sound, and has been still photographer on features including The Catechism Cataclysm, 4 Minute Mile and Danger Diva. For One Way Train, Regan led production design, including the film’s train tickets.
Editor L. Tremaine has been making and editing short films since 2016. A graduate of the University of Washington Film and Video Production program, Tremaine has worked across pre- and post-production with a focus on editing.
French-born, US-based composer Charles-Henri Avelange writes leitmotif-driven orchestral scores; his film credits include Screamboat (2025). He created the SIFF Orchestra for the Seattle International Film Festival’s opening night, and his symphonic work The Fireman’s Prayer premiered at a September 11 commemoration in Everett, Washington.
Alexandra Andrianova · Alicia Paul · Bradley Fujimoto · Cedric Howard · Claudia Leigh · Dario McHayle · Fei Liu · Fernando Gonzalez · Janet Nyambura · Jared Hansen · Jason Brooks · Jeffrey Ostrom · Morgan Dillard · Nidhi Konathala · Nova Rockwood · Rob Banes · Shuqi Feng · Tiffany Smalls · Tina Cao · Tina Telles · Tyler Marchand · Viktoriia Zadorozhna
Line Producer Bry Troyer
1st Assistant Director Chloes Ciara
2nd Assistant Director Kyli Lora
Stunt Coordinator Tyson Dailey
Acting Coach Dawn Pearse
Script Supervisor L. Tremaine
Production Coordinators Emdi Riyaa Abdinur · Bry Troyer
Production Assistants Matthew Seiji Burns · Jessie Dirks · Byron Donaldson · Denny Nguyen · Anterpreet Bains
Production Design Assistants / Prop Makers Jessie Dirks · Denny Nguyen · Harika Sripathy
1st Assistant Camera Patrick Gonzalez
2nd Assistant Camera / Data Wrangler Nolan Maze
Gaffer Nicky Smit
Key Grip Raymond Power
Grip Corbin Weitenhagen
Swing Grips Isaac Handelman · Byron Donaldson
Sound Mixer Jessica Fleck
Boom Operator Tyson Awalt
Sound Assistant Matthew Seiji Burns
Wardrobe Supervisor Rizza Bagan
Wardrobe Assistant Luiza Sadykova
Select Wardrobe Provided by LITTLE WOMEN ATELIER
Naomi Mechem-Miller · Jason Brooks
Luiza Sadykova · Zhuo Chen · Anterpreet Bains
Still Photographers L. Tremaine · Regan MacStravic
Key Crafty Aditi Nagpal
TCM Models & Talent
TC Talent
Post-Production Producer Jillian Crans
VFX Artist Duncan Sharp
Colorist Theo Angell
Sound Design Seth Thomsen
Re-Recording Mixer Paul Eric Miller
Post-Production Sound Mix Bad Animals
Title Design Devin Ballard
Orchestrator Andrew Osano
Clarinets Jonathan Sacdalan
Solo Clarinet Performance by Jonathan Sacdalan
Violins Ambroise Aubrun · Boryana Popova
Violas Corinne Sobolewsky · Ariana Solotoff
Celli Derek Stein · Adrienne Woods
Solo Cello Performance by Adrienne Woods
Musician Contractor Tawnee Lillo
Music Recorded at Dennis Moody Studios & Avelange Music Studios (Los Angeles, CA)
Score Recording Engineer Dennis Moody
Score Mix by Avelange Music
Produced as a capstone project for the Certificate in Film & Video Production, University of Washington Continuum College.
Special thanks to the UW Film Program faculty and students.
Wendi Wills · Tom Long · Liam Nolosco · Sound Transit · Lee Goldman · Mike Skoptsov · City of Seattle · Seattle Office of Economic Development · Siyin Ma · Wenyu Qi
This film is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
© 2026 Nord Story Lab LLC. All Rights Reserved.
One Way Train is currently in festival submissions. Screenings will be posted here as they are confirmed.
All lines on this map run to Union Station in Seattle, where the film was shot. Add your city and a lamp lights up where you are.
| Train | From | To | Platform | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cascade Eventide | Fairhaven | Seattle | 2 | On time |
| Pacific Dawn | Seattle | San Jose | 3 | On time |
| One Way Train | Seattle | No return | 4 | Boarding |
No lamps lit yet. Be the first passenger.
New lamps light up once a day, after the stationmaster makes the rounds.
Tell us where you are watching from and your city joins the map.
Every ticket on this line runs one way. If you could go back to one moment, where would it be? Write it on a ticket that can never be used.
Festivals, press, sales and distribution: write to the production office or the director.
onewaytrain