Last Train Home

Chunyun, literally “spring transportation”, is a hectic 40-day period around the Chinese New Year, with hundreds of millions of migrant workers travelling back home for family reunions. This mind-boggling “largest annual human migration on earth” is delicately captured in director FAN Lixin’s Last Train Home. Fan takes a close-up of one single migrant family, the Zhangs. In 1990, Zhang and his wife left their young children to find work in the city, consoled by the hope that their wages would lift their children into a better life. But their dreams were shattered when their daughter, Qin, dropped out of school and became a migrant worker herself.

FAN Lixin was born in and grew up in China during times of modernization. Before moving to Canada, he worked as a journalist with the national television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), traveling the country and experiencing inequality caused by China’s rapid economic expansion. As a result, he became a documentary filmmaker with a focus on social issues. Last Train Home is his directorial debut, which won the Best Feature Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and two Emmy Awards.