Last Train Home wins top prize at IDFA

posted at Indiewire

“Train” Wins IDFA’s Top Prize
by Eugene Hernandez (November 27, 2009)


Lixin Fan’s “Last Train Home” won the award for best feature length documentary at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam today. A Chinese Canadian documentary by a first time director, the film examines international issues by telling the story of mother and father factory workers who are trying to get home to reunite with their family for the new year,.

“The jury is of the opinion that this is a striking, honest film about a topic that is of relevance to the entire world,” the festival said today, in a statement.

Reporting on the stunningly photographed and expertly constructed film in indieWIRE earlier this week from IDFA, we noted that the documentary features the work of a filmmaker who has immersed himself in the lives of his subjects - the Zhangs - to explore the story of their fractured family. Many moments in this intimate movie are incredibly striking and ultimately so symbolic of a much broader situation. The drama of the Zhang’s personal story - and their specific struggle to simply get back home for a few days in 2006 - represents the plight of some 130 million Chinese workers who travel home from the nation’s cities just once a year to be with their families. And, it speaks to a much deeper international situation.

“I would like my audience to think about the relationship between themselves and these migrant workers,” Fan recently said in an interview. “The whole world today is interconnected. We’re all one. How we live our life in the West has a very close tie to how people live their lives in developing countries.”