3. Last Train Home (2010)
Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan's Last Train Home is a film that examines the cost of China's ascendance as an economic superpower. The country's bustling cities are thrown into unimaginable chaos every spring as in excess of 130 million migrant workers return to their home villages for the New Year's holiday, the world's largest human migration. As epic a spectacle as this is, Fan paints a picture of a country caught between its rural heritage and industrial ambitions. Filmed over several years in a classic verité style, Fan's film invites the viewer to join a couple who have undertaken this annual trip for almost two decades. Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for back-breaking jobs in city factories, though their teenage daughter grows to resent their prolonged absence in what amounts to an emotionally engaging and visually striking documentary.