Last Train Home Directed by Lixin Fan, 2010

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration—an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. 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. 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.