Toronto – January 22, 2011
EyeSteelFilm’s Last Train Home and Mokhtar both made CANADA’s TOP TEN film list!
The films are now being screened at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
MOKHTAR
Saturday January 22 – 06:30 PM
Panel Statement
Disturbing and at the same time life affirming, Mohktar opens a door to childhood that adults prefer locked. Directed with an uncompromising vision, the film grabs the viewer by the shoulders and hones in precisely onto a moment where a child’s innocence is lost forever. – Sudz Sutherland
LAST TRAIN HOME
Monday January 24 – 09:00 PM
Tuesday January 25 – 03:15 PM
Friday January 28 – 06:30 PM
Panel Statement
Last Train Home is an intimate and stirring vérité portrait of a family indelibly impacted by migrant work. Director Lixin Fan melodically weaves private, penetrating glimpses into the fractured Zhang family with vivid sweeps of China, including the desperate train journey of millions of migrant workers to their rural homes for the New Year. Filled with longing, it is an astonishing documentary about hopes and dreams gone astray. – Agata Smoluch del Sorbo
This moving documentary follows a married couple — both employed in a Chinese denim factory — as they partake in the world’s largest human migration: the annual voyage of 130 million labourers from urban manufacturing centers to their rural hometowns. A fascinating portrayal of China’s social infrastructure problems, as well as an intimate family portrait, Last Train Home is itself an engrossing journey into the lives of average Chinese workers. – Liane Balaban
“my favorite film of the festival, bar none – watching this devastating portrait of a family trying to glue itself back together, you wonder how China, on its way to becoming the world’s richest nation, will avoid civil war if it doesn’t also attend to the needs of the millions of poverty-stricken families like this one.” – [Read More]
“”It’s a huge honour to be admitted to Sundance,” says Lixin Fan, who is here with The Last Train Home. A former broadcast journalist in his native China, Mr. Fan documented the world’s biggest human migration that happens every year as factory workers head out of the cities and cram onto trains bound for small villages for the holidays.” [Read More]
“…a beautifully shot, haunting and haunted large-scale portrait….conveys the enormity of this exodus while bringing you close to a family whose fraught efforts to reunite are symptomatic of a deeper struggle affecting China.” [Read More]
Austin, Texas: South by Southwest is arguably one of the world’s coolest festivals — although I’ve also heard the fest’s convergence of Music, Film, and Interactive described as “Spring Break for Nerds”. In either case, EyeSteelFilm is happy to announce that both Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam and Last Train Home have been selected to SXSW 2010 (in the 24 Beats per Second, and Best of Fests sections, respectively). It is also rumored that many Taqwacore bands, as well as the author of the novel “The Taqwacores”, Michael Mohammed Knight, and director Omar Majeed will all be on hand with us for a massive Taqwacore concert / party co-presented with our U.S. distributor, Lorber Films. But so far that is just a rumor. Also of note: an awesome panel (everyone loves a good panel) on the tools needed for indie distribution, featuring Laure Parsons, Jon Reiss, Brians Chirls, Liz Ogilvie (B-Side) and Mila Aung-Thwin (EyeSteelFilm). See you there!
