Last Train Home
Last Train Home
Documentary Edge Award winner - International Competition | Best Feature
Australasian Premiere
Canada 2009 / 87min. / Mandarin with English subtitles.
Director Lixin Fan. Producers Mila Aung-Thwin, Daniel Cross.
Within China, workers migrate to the cities in order to earn money to support their family back home. But at what cost?
At New Year, migrant workers fight to board trains for their annual pilgrimage to spend a few days reunited with their family at home. However for many of these workers, the holiday reality is heartache as the months spent apart cause estrangement and misunderstandings.
In a sophisticated debut, director Fan captures two years in the life of the Zhangs. Sixteen years ago, they left their young children in order to find work in the city and make a better life for their children. Ironically, their hopes for the future are undone by their very absence. Their eldest child, Qin is a rebellious and resentful adolescent crippled by the abandonment. She drops out of school to become a migrant worker herself, breaking her parents’ hearts. Fan follows the parents as they attempt 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.
The Zhangs facing the difficult choices of a society caught between old ways and new realities. Can they get ahead yet undo some of the damage done to their family?
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The Documentary New Zealand TrustThe Documentary New Zealand Trust
Is a non-for-profit charitable organization that advocates and promotes the importance of documentary films and filmmaking in New Zealand to our creative, business and wider communities. The Trust organizes the Documentary Edge Festival and Documentary Edge Forum and Pitching Forum.
Documentary Edge Festival is Australasia's only international competitive documentary film festival held annually in New Zealand and showcases the very best documentary film from New Zealand and around the World. The festival runs from late February and includes an Awards Night, Q&A sessions with filmmakers, social functions and more.
Documentary Edge Forum is a 3-day industry event runs at the same time of Documentary Edge Festival. It includes master-classes, seminars and panels. A key event of the Forum is a Pitching Forum attended by overseas commissioners, buyers and sales agents where selected projects are pitched with an opportunity to earn a commission or co-production funding. Documentary Edge also examine the innovations and challenges facing the documentary filmmaking industry so as to better equip our filmmakers. The Forum is place to learn and network with local and international professionals from the industry.
The Trust is also developing the establishment of Documentary Edge Campus, a Resouce Centre for documentaries in Auckland.
In the Gallery
Submitted19 Jan 2009InWhats On and Reviews
