AML: Chinese Documentary Film "Last Train Home" opens at Michigan Theater Friday

If you have any complaints about traveling over Thanksgiving weekend, check out “Last Train Home,” which opens this Friday, November 26, and runs to December 2, at the Michigan Theater. This award-winning documentary film, made by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan, looks at the epic phenomenon of 130 million workers going home for Chinese New Year’s, as well as the intimate cost to one poor rural family of leaving the children behind to be raised by grandparents in order to work those distant and demanding factory jobs.

From the Michigan Theater’s website:

“Beautifully shot, haunting and haunted.” - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin—now a restless and rebellious teenager—both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower.

(click on link for more) http://www.annarbor.com/passions-pursuits/chinese_documentary_film_last_train_home_opens_at_michigan_theater_friday