Ryder Film Series brings ‘Last Train Home’ to campus

The camera in the documentary “Last Train Home” is allowed to linger, drinking in the surroundings of the Chinese landscape and the tiny details that say so much about their culture and way of life.

In the film’s opening shot, 130 million migrant workers fight to make a train. The film zooms in on one family capable of providing a stirring slice of life in this Eastern world.

Each Chinese New Year, the 130 million parents that left their families in an attempt to support them come home, making up the largest human migration on the planet. They are often awaited by naïve and distant children who do not know the hours and tireless effort their parents put forth to support their education.

Many films have been made about Chinese youth who feel stifled by their strict parents who demand nothing but the best from them.

“Last Train Home” looks at the other side of the coin, realizing parents can’t bare the thought of their children joining the same grueling, factory workforce they did.

The plight of the migrant Chinese worker is illustrated in just one family of four. Suqin and Changhua are the migrant parents of teenage girl Qin and the young boy Yang. The adults struggle to figure out how to balance love and parenting for two children otherwise raised by their grandparents.

The daughter has a mindset that her own freedom is more valuable than her education, and she drops out of school to join her parents on the assembly lines. What she does not realize is the pain of waiting at a train station with millions of others for a week’s time, just so she can get home.

This is the story of a set of individuals, but it is the same for nearly all of these migrant workers, for whom director Lixin Fan dedicated his film.

As part of the Ryder Film Series, Ryder director Peter LoPilato worked with the IU East Asian Studies Department to have this film screened.

“It’s such a strong film, extraordinarily moving, and works so well both on a personal level — one family’s story — as well as a on a grander, epic scale,” LoPilato said.

On the importance of seeing the film, Ryder Film Series employee Andrew Berenger said, “A lot of these films that come in don’t get a chance to be shown at corporation type theaters, and I support every film that’s chosen here.”

'LAST TRAIN HOME'
WHEN 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday
WHERE upstairs at Fine Arts building
MORE INFO “Last Train Home” is a revealing, unpredictable documentary about hundred of millions who travel by train to and from work, leaving families behind in hopes of supporting them.