Last Train Home
Highly Recommended!! very nice documentary ...
OFFICIAL COMPETITION, SUNDANCE 2010
WINNER, Best Feature: IDFA International Documentary Festival AmsterdamWINNER, Best Documentary: Whistler Film Festival
WINNER, Best Canadian Film: Rencontres International de Documentaire
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos, as all at once, a tidal wave of humanity attempts to return home by train. It is the Chinese New Year. The wave is made up of millions of migrant factory workers. The homes they seek are the rural villages and families they left behind to seek work in the booming coastal cities. It is an epic spectacle that tells us much about China, a country discarding traditional ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global economic dominance.
Last Train Home, an emotionally
engaging and visually beautiful debut film from Chinese-Canadian
director Lixin Fan, draws us into the fractured lives of a single
migrant family caught up in this desperate annual migration. Sixteen
years ago, the Zhangs abandoned 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 in a bitter irony, the Zhangs’ hopes
for the future are undone by their very absence. Qin, the child they
left behind, has grown into adolescence crippled by a sense of
abandonment. In an act of teenage rebellion, she drops out of school.
She too will become a migrant worker. The decision is a heartbreaking
blow for the parents. In classic cinema verité style, Last Train Home
follows the Zhangs’ attempts to change their daughter’s course and
repair their ruptured family. Intimate and candid, the film paints a
human portrait of the dramatic changes sweeping China. We identify with
the Zhangs as they navigate through the stark and difficult choices of
a society caught between old ways and new realities. Can they get ahead
and still undo some of the damage that has been done to their family?
Comments
Post a Comment