Super Channel, Canada’s only national pay television network, is pleased to announce it will premiere Last Train Home, July 12 at 8 p.m. ET in crystal clear HD.
From the team that brought you the internationally acclaimed hit Up the Yangtze and the producers of Rip: A Remix Manifesto and Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, Last Train Home is a classic cinema verité style look at China’s tidal wave of humanity every spring, as cities are plunged into chaos, as millions of migrant workers attempt to return home by train for Chinese New Year. The homes they seek are the rural villages and families they left behind to seek work in the booming coastal cities. This epic spectacle tells much about China, a country discarding traditional ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global economic dominance.
Emotionally engaging and visually beautiful, this debut film from Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan (associate producer on Yangtze), draws viewers into the fractured lives of a single migrant family caught up in this desperate annual migration.
Sixteen years ago, the Zhangs abandoned their young children to find work in the city, consoled by the hope that their wages would lift their children into a better life. But in a bitter irony, the Zhangs’ hopes for the future are undone by their very absence as the child they left behind, crippled by a sense of abandonment, drops out of school to become a migrant worker.
Last Train Home follows the Zhangs’ attempts to change their daughter’s course and repair their ruptured family.
“Super Channel is very pleased to offer viewers the best of Canadian films and this documentary certainly lives up to that title,” said Justin Rebelo, Super Channel Director of Canadian Programming. “We think everyone will find this a compelling, fascinating and gut-wrenchingly intimate story.”
