10TH BELFAST FILM FESTIVAL

OCTOBER COUNTRY HIS AND HERS COLONY THE LIVING ROOM OF THE NATION RACING DREAMS BANANAS!* HIS AND HERS

LAST TRAIN HOME

QFT
Friday 23 April 9.00pm
£6.50/£6.00

Director: Lixin Fan / Canada/China/UK / 2009 / 85 mins / Print source: Eyesteel Films


	Chinese New Year, when 200 million migrant workers travel home to families, this is the story of one. Your difficult commute to work is nothing, a stroll in the park compared to this experience. In a sea of frantic people we finally encounter the Zhangs, a couple who, sixteen years before, left their children in rural China with their grandmother to work in China’s industrialised cities. Like most migrant stories their journey is full of dreams and hope for their children’s future. It’s a catch 22 though, only seeing their children once a year threatens the very foundation of those dreams. Their eldest child Qin has just become a teenager consumed with a rebellious rage about her abandonment. Dropping out of school she runs away to work and party in the nightclubs of the big city. A shocking familial clash of values and fortunes is inevitable, and in this context it seems a familiar one to any modern Chinese family. Last Train Home is a beautifully shot and haunting large scale portrait which conveys the scale of this exodus. It also brings you close to a family whose fraught efforts to reunite are symptomatic of a deeper struggle affecting China.