'Last Train Home'

Every spring in China, millions of migrant workers take part in a mass exodus from the cities, as they head to the country to spend New Year with their families.

Director Lixin Fan's film opens with a scene showing the huge strain this places on China's rail infrastructure as a heaving swell of exhausted travellers battle to get the last seats on the trains heading home.

It looks incredibly stressful but then these passengers are used to stress. Working in urban factories, they spend their lives doing harsh jobs, usually separated from their families by thousands of miles.

This documentary focuses on one couple caught up in the struggle Zhang Changhua and wife Chen Suqin. They left their infant son and daughter behind in Sichuan province to go to work in the city and have been making the annual trek home to see them for 17 years.

Though they moved to Guangzhou to better provide for their family, the separation has inevitably caused problems.

Their teenage daughter Zhang Qin is resentful that she only sees them once a year and the New Year's holiday is anything but restful as she rebels against her parents.

What is great about Fan's film is the amount of access the family give him over a period of several years and the intimate footage this yields.

At times such as when Changhua and his daughter clash badly in front of other relatives it's almost easy to forget that this is real life and not some gritty, kitchen sink drama.

Certainly, it appears that the father has forgotten the cameras are rolling as he loses his temper and disciplines his daughter. It's an uncomfortable scene to watch and is made all the more depressing by the fact that we have seen how desperate the parents were to get home to their kids.

They have paid well over the odds for their train tickets and so want this to be a happy family reunion but, of course, it is not as simple as that.

The Zhangs' story, the film implies, is not atypical. The anxious migrant workers we see struggling on the railway platform are all dealing with the grim realities of modern-day China.

They can choose to stay in the country with their families and live hand-to-mouth on subsistence farming.

Or they can move to the city to accept low wages, poor living conditions and the "registration system" rules which prevent them from taking their children to live with them.

Qin, aged 17, has seen how her parents' choice has affected the family. But she opts to do the same thing, leaving school to work for a pittance and live in a shared dormitory in the city.

As her parents are shown soldiering on in the fabric factory where they work, the implication is clear – they are contributing to China's ever-growing economy but at what cost to themselves?

Fan's film offers no answers and is certainly not an uplifting documentary. But it is an honest one and essential viewing for anyone interested in seeing how a great many people in the world are forced to live.

'Last Train Home' screens tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.