Credits: screenplay: Lixin Fan; director of photography: Lixin Fan; editor: Lixin Fan, Marry Stephens; music: Olivier Alary; sound: Cory Rizos; producer: Mila Aung-Thwin, Daniel Cross; production: EYESTEELFILM production;

Country: Canada, China

Year: 2009

Running time: 87

Colour: Colour

Format: 35 mm

No country has a mass holiday exodus as large as China’s. All migrant workers, as many as 130 million, journey to their hometowns for the Chinese New Year. Train stations are packed, difficult to maneuver. In this excellent, highly affecting Canadian-Chinese documentary, Chinese filmmaker Lixin Fan wisely spotlights one couple caught up in the pilgrimage, garment laborers in South China who hail from poor Sichuan. He charts their tribulations attempting to purchase tickets, and their mixed emotions at seeing the children they left behind. (The kids have no emotional investment in their absent folks.) The Chinese economy depends on these provincials to go to large cities and expend most of their energy in factories, even if they have to give up what is most dear to them. Few of us will ever know the frustration these people endure in order to keep their families afloat. Howard Feinstein