documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
directed by
Lixin Fan
Lixin Fan (範立欣, Fàn Lìxīn), b. March 1977, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China,範立欣 覓 趣
(Miqu) is a and produced by Daniel Cross and
Mila Aung-Thwin
Mila Aung-Thwin is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, producer and activist whose films deal with social justice.
He had a multi-disciplinary education in arts, journalism, and photography. In 1998, he met his fellow director/producer Daniel Cross ...
of
EyeSteelFilm
EyeSteelFilm is a Montreal-based Canada, Canadian Film, cinema production company co-founded by Daniel Cross (filmmaker), Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, dedicated to socially engaged cinema, bringing social and political change through cinematic ...
. It won the Best Documentary Feature at 2009 IDFA and has been distributed by
Zeitgeist Films
Zeitgeist Films is a New York-based distribution company founded in 1988 which acquires and distributes films from the U.S. and around the world. In 2017, Zeitgeist entered into a multi-year strategic alliance with film distributor Kino Lorber. ...
in the US.
Synopsis
Every spring, China's 130 million migrant workers travel back to their home villages for the
New Year
New Year is the time or day currently at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one. Many cultures celebrate the event in some manner. In the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar system to ...
's holiday. This exodus is the world's largest human migration.
Working over several years, director Lixin Fan travelled with one couple who has embarked on these annual treks for almost two decades. Like many of China's rural poor, the Zhangs left their native village of Huilong, ,
Guang'an District
Guang'an District () is a district of the city of Guang'an, Sichuan province, China. It is one of two ''urban districts'' of the city.
Characteristics
It is renowned as the birthplace and former residence of Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (22 ...
in
Sichuan
Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...
province and their newborn daughter to find work in
Guangzhou
Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...
in a garment factory for 16 years and see her only once a year during the Spring Festival. Their daughter Qin, now a restless and rebellious teenager, resents her parents' absence and longs for her own freedom away from school and her rural hometown, much to the dismay of her parents. She eventually leaves school, against the wishes of her parents, to work in the city.
Developments since the film
In a March 2010 follow-up interview, director
Lixin Fan
Lixin Fan (範立欣, Fàn Lìxīn), b. March 1977, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China,範立欣 覓 趣
(Miqu) is a reveals that the Zhangs are still working in the factory and Qin telephoned, but did not visit, for the New Year.
In September 2011, Fan said that Qin was now a vocational student in Beijing, and that while Qin's mother is back on the farm, her father still works at the factory.
In January 2012, an update on the family was released:
"We always kept contact with the family after we finished filming. The girl, she quit that job at the bar and went to find a new job. She's floating around. I knew she had a job at a hotel as a bartender and she went back to the factory for a small while and she came to study in a vocational school in Beijing last year for a few months, and then she quit again. Now she's working in a small city in Hubei. She's 22 now, so a big girl. She doesn't et back for Spring Festival She still resents her parents very much. She thinks she never received any love from the parents, so she'll deliberately avoid them during Chinese New Year.
The little brother is now 16 years old. He was doing really great in school, he got really good marks. He's second-year in high school hinese high schools go three years He got a few No. 1s in the past few years. His parents were really happy.
Mother, she lost her job. She echnicallyquit, but it's because of the financial crisis,
hich
Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
brought down the salaries so much. The factory usually doesn't fire you, it just drops the salary to a level that makes you quit by yourself. So she went back to the village to take care of the son. So now it's the father working alone in Guangzhou in the factory. So I think it's a really sad thing to see: by the end of this documentary, you see this family has been shattered into smaller pieces. Although the daughter did "succeed" in finding her own independence in the city."
Awards
* 2009: Won Best Feature Documentary at the 22nd annual
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam. Over a period of twelve days, it has screened more than 300 films and sold more than 250,000 tic ...
(IDFA)
* 2009: Won Cinémathèque Québécoise Best Quebec film award at the
Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal
The Montreal International Documentary Festival (french: Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal) is a Canadian documentary film festival, staged annually in Montreal, Quebec.
In English, the festival now goes by the name Montreal I ...
(RIDM)
* 2010: Won Best Documentary Feature Film award at
Asia Pacific Screen Awards
The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) is an international cultural initiative overseen by the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and headquartered in Australia. In order to realise UNESCO's goals of promoting and preserving the different cultures th ...
(APSA)
* 2010: Won Golden Gate Award in the Investigative Documentary Feature Category at the
San Francisco International Film Festival
The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in in ...
(SFiFF)
* 2010: Official Selection at
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
* 2010: Official Selection at
New Directors/New Films Festival
The New Directors/New Films Festival is an annual film festival held in New York City, and organized jointly by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Film at Lincoln Center, previously known as the Film Society o ...
* 2010: Won Best Documentary Feature at the
RiverRun International Film Festival
The RiverRun International Film Festival is an annual Oscar-qualifying film festival held each spring in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The festival is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and presents a variety of feature-length and short films fro ...
Genie Award
The Genie Awards were given out annually by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to recognize the best of Canadian cinema from 1980–2012. They succeeded the Canadian Film Awards (1949–1978; also known as the "Etrog Awards," for scu ...
31st Genie Awards
The 31st Genie Awards ceremony was held on March 10, 2011 to honour films released in 2010.
in 2011.
Reception
''Last Train Home'' is certified "fresh" with a 100% rating on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, earning the Golden Tomato award for best limited-release and best foreign film.
Manohla Dargis of
the New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
picked ''Last Train Home'' as one of the most outstanding works from the 2010 Sundance by characterizing it as "a beautifully shot, haunting and haunted large scale portrait."
Film critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
praised the film for its depiction of conflict in one family as they struggle to improve their quality of life; giving the film four out of four stars. He concluded that due to the film's depiction of the effects of
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
on the country that " e rulers of China may someday regret that they distributed the works of
Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...
so generously."
Praising ''Last Train Home'' as "a documentary masterpiece," Brian Brooks of
IndieWIRE
IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollyw ...
wrote that "filmmaker Lixin Fan may very well be one of modern-day China's great non-fiction storytellers."
Critics of IndieWIRE placed ''Last Train Home'' at "top four" in its list of Top Ten Competition Films of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
''Last Train Home'' was one of the top five films nominated for the Directors Guild of America Documentary Prize, announced on January 29, 2011 at the 63rd annual DGA Awards Dinner. It lost to Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job."
Lixin Fan was interviewed by
Anna Maria Tremonti
Anna Maria Tremonti (born July 2, 1957) is a Canadian radio and television journalist who has been featured on a variety of radio and television programs on the CBC.
She has served as a senior reporter for '' The National'', where she won two G ...
''Last Train Home'' was released on American screens on September 3, 2010.
See also
*
2009 in film
The year 2009 saw the release of many films. Seven made the top 50 list of highest-grossing films. Also in 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that as of that year, their Best Picture category would consist of ten nomin ...
*
List of Canadian films of 2009
This is a list of Canadian films which were released in 2009:
See also
* 2009 in Canada
* 2009 in Canadian television
External linksFeature Films Released In 2009 With Country of Origin Canadaat IMDbCanada's Top Ten for 2009(lists of top ten ...
List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, a film has a rating of 100% if each professional review recorded by the website is assessed as positive rather than negative. The percentage is based on the film's reviews aggregated by the webs ...
EyeSteelFilm
EyeSteelFilm is a Montreal-based Canada, Canadian Film, cinema production company co-founded by Daniel Cross (filmmaker), Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, dedicated to socially engaged cinema, bringing social and political change through cinematic ...