Every spring chaos strikes the major Chinese cities as a tidal wave of humanity, all at once, tries to make the journey back home by train. These are the factory workers that migrate to the booming and bustling coastal cities for jobs and they are in numbers as great as 130 million. It is the Chinese New Year and these masses try to get back to their families which live in ( mostly remote) villages, which making it the biggest migration. Last Train Home captures the journey of one such Chinese family as it travels to its native village. The documentary also presents the picture of China’s transition as it discards tradition and moves toward global economic dominance and modernity.
Lixin Fan (of Chinese-Canadian descent), in his directorial debut brings a visually beautiful and emotionally engaging film that takes us into the fractured life of the Zhang family which is caught up in the desperate cycle of these annual migrations. The documentary looks at the irony of how the Zhangs, who had abandoned their family so that their children could have a better education are faced with a rebellious adolescent daughter, Qin, who has dropped out of school to be a migrant factory worker. It then shows us the desperate efforts of the family to change her mind which in the end conclude the documentary giving deeper insights into the transitions taking place in the Chinese culture.
It is indeed a candid and intimate journey that paints the human portrait of the changes that are sweeping across China. We see the Zhangs trying desperately to keep the family together and at the same time they are ironically burdened with the financial compulsion to be away from the family. Their struggle to not lose their daughter and the enormous sacrifice is truly heartbreaking. Can they break free of the entrapment between old ways and new realities and undo the damage to their family? The answer lies in this award winning documentary.