Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival February 24, 2010

Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan’s award-winning documentary, "Last Train Home" (2009), opens the 7th annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, co-presented with TIFF Cinematheque.

"Last Train Home" draws us into the fractured lives of a family caught up in one of the world’s largest annual migrations. Over 130 million Chinese work in the booming factories on the coast. Each year countless millions of them attempt to return home to their villages for Chinese New Year which falls on February 14th this year. Fan will be at the screening, co-presented with the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and will talk about his film.
This year’s festival, running until March 6, features 10 documentary and feature films that focus on survivors and activists from around the world who are fighting to restore freedom, justice and a sense of community in their home countries.

Three feature films are included in this year’s lineup. "Triage" (2009), by the Academy Award®-winning director Danis Tanovic ("No Man’s Land") stars Colin Farrell as an Irish war photographer in the late 1980’s dealing with post traumatic stress after covering the conflict in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

"Welcome" (2009,) winner of the LUX 2009 film prize, by the French director Philippe Lioret, is set in Calais and focuses on a swimming instructor trying to help an illegal Kurdish immigrant from Iraq swim across the English Channel from France to England and a new life.

Carlos Carrera’s "Backyard" (2009), is a gritty drama about the ongoing murders of young Mexican women in the US-Mexican border town of Juárez.

Official Website: http://humanrightsfilmfestival.ca