On February 28th, 1917, Nicholas II, Czar of All Russias, boards the imperial train and heads for his capital city, Petrograd, leaving behind the Russian front. It’s the first day of a train journey through the frozen Russian flatlands that would change the course of history. Over three desperate days the Imperial train tried to outrun the Russian revolution. After a 26-hour race the Czar discovers the railways are under the control of the revolutionaries. The imperial train is redirected to the northern town of Pskov. He remains blocked there for a whole day as events in Petrograd degenerate. On Thursday March 2, 1917, Nicholas II is forced to sign his abdication. The Czar’s carriage on the imperial train, the Czarina’s studio in the imperial palace, and along the way the soldiers, workers and peasants living the February revolution: these are the three perspectives and fictional locations of our documentary. From the imperial carriage we depart for a series of flashbacks and intrusions on particular events, highly representative of Nicholas’ life, attitudes and character. Through various primary sources used in voice over (his private diary and the correspondence with his wife Alexandra Feodorovna), archive images, fictional reconstructions, interviews with historians Dominic Lieven and Orlando Figes, the documentary brings to life the key moments of the Czar’s life. What emerges is a startling contrast between his private dominion with his beloved wife and family and his public duties as ruler – the isolation and despair he seems to have felt while reluctantly facing the political arena, “condemned” to be Czar. This contrast will be underscored by the alternating use of dramatic reconstruction to depict the Czar’s private realm and extraordinary archive film and photographs to show the public man and the major historical evolutions and revolutions of the time. All the major political events and protagonists of the day as well as the smallest details of daily life in Russia are richly represented in a wide variety of existing archive material.