Last Train Home

Lixin Fan’s documentary on “the world’s largest human migration” (Chinese workers waiting to catch trains for their annual pilgrimage home for the New Year) distinguishes itself as something more than your typical Dateline-ish social-issues missive. Doing double duty as the film’s cinematographer, Fan demonstrates a pitch-perfect photojournalistic eye. That Last Train Home balances such impeccable compositions with its cultural context and humanistic content, however, is damn near a miracle.