Last Train Home

In China, each new lunar year, 130 million migrant workers go back home to their families, producing the world’s largest migration. Although the images of the bustling crowds in the Chinese railway stations are more than spectacular, they are not the main theme of Last Train Home. The train in this film, which is dedicated to the migrant workers, is a symbol illustrating what has always underlain Chinese cinema and literature: family separation, be it parents and children or husbands and wives, for the sake of survival. The more life becomes difficult, the more sacred the Confucian sense of family. The New Year celebrate first and foremost family unity, which is as fleeting as it is impossible. What is really at stake in this film is the “home”. (Yann Lardeau)