By Wen-Hsuan Tseng
Last Train Home, an award-winning documentary directed by Chinese-Canadian
director Lixin Fan, will open in New York on September 3rd at IFC
Center. Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million
migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration–an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past
and industrial future.
Working over several years in classic verité style, Chinese-Canadian
filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning
hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Changhua and
Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin–now a restless and rebellious teenager–both bitterly
resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to
the utter devastation of her parents.
Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home‘s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower.
Wen-Hsuan Tseng is a representative of Zeitgeist Films. Watch the trailer and
find out more about Last Train Home at www.zeitgeistfilms.com/lasttrainhome.
