A gripping documentary that reveals the depressing inadequacies of China’s social and financial structure.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2022

A deeply moving look at an unavoidably fractured family.

| Jul 2, 2021

The movie puts a human face on this migration by showing its affects on a single family.

| May 17, 2018

Do not miss it. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 22, 2018

Rarely in a documentary does every shot matter as a bearer of emotion and information. Lixin Fan's nonfiction debut, Last Train Home (2009), is just such an exceptional movie.

| Jun 2, 2015

Rivaling China's finest documentarians, first-time director Lixin Fan begins his Last Train Home with a handful of unshakable images.

| Nov 12, 2013

Epic in scale and global in outlook yet devastatingly intimate and extraordinarily personal in focus...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 27, 2011

Lixin Fan's amazingly intimate account could only be made with almost unlimited and unrestrained access -- a privilege that isn't abused and one that pays dividends for us in many ways.

| May 9, 2011

A moving film that succeeds both on a macro level and as a portrait of a single family struggling with problems both universal and specific to their time and place.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 26, 2011

A startling and absolutely superb masterpiece of a documentary ...

| Jan 31, 2011

Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan considers the social upheavals wrought by China's economic miracle.

| Jan 4, 2011

This extraordinary Chinese-Canadian documentary illuminates the human price involved in China's ascent into a global economic power: every year over 130 million migrant workers take an arduous journey back home.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 17, 2010

Despite being ruled by the Communist Party, the China depicted in this powerful documentary evokes Karl Marx: "The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."

| Nov 28, 2010

Lixin captures the messy tragedy of their lives with dignity and intimacy, and there are some scenes, such as a violent confrontation between father and daughter, that carry the sting of reality.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 12, 2010

Last Train Home is a harrowing experience. Don't expect to come out smiling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2010

Director Lixin Fan gives a heartbreaking human voice to the downside of China's economic upside -- causing us to question the intrinsic worth of ambition, be it individual, societal or national.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 10, 2010

Last Train Home finds a kind of desperate poetry in the hardships of the annual trip home...

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 5, 2010

Last Train Home will tug at your heartstrings as it opens your eyes, but it also will make you feel incredibly lucky and more than a little spoiled.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 5, 2010

Heartbreaking and humanistic in the best sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 4, 2010

It is a sometimes shocking, oftentimes heartbreaking look at what it takes to raise children in a culture where grueling factory work can take parents away from their young for months at a time.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 29, 2010