时间投入。In 2006 Mr. Fan and a skeleton crew of three began documenting the effects of industrial change on this family工业革命对这个家庭的后果, with whom he spent three years, on and off. 十年磨一剑，制片人差远了。

空间距离。Mr. Zhang and Ms. Cheng left their village in Sichuan — Mr. Fan’s home province and the country’s largest exporter of labor — to work in Guangzhou。

The film cuts拍摄 between the factory where they toil劳动 seven days a week, and the bucolic田园牧歌 but chronically慢性 poor countryside where they visit their little boy and teenage daughter, who are raised by a careworn劳累 yet uncomplaining任劳任怨 grandmother。

主旨。Mr. Fan, a slender 33-year-old who cheerfully attributes his fluent English to “fighting with并肩战斗 my Chinese-American girlfriend,” showed a sociologist’s grasp of the broad shifts that have afflicted workers。

台上五分钟，台下十年功。To gain the family’s trust Mr. Fan and his crew ate with them in their dormitory宿舍 in Guangzhou, taught them how to manage their own wireless mikes麦克风, which they wore constantly经常, and would sleep on the pile of warm jeans the couple made while the crew waited to tag along尾随 after they finished their shift at midnight.

“So 15 minutes into the film, after that first train ride,” he said proudly, “we’d already known each other for a year.”

感情折磨，生活融入。

At home Mr. Zhang and Ms. Cheng encountered面对 their deeply resentful逆反 daughter, Qin, 17, who rebels against her parents’ pressure to get the grades成绩、文凭 they see as her passport保证 to a better life. At one point the simmering tensions酝酿已久的分歧 come to a boil冲突, forcing Mr. Fan to decide on his feet whether to intervene. “The kids want more attention照顾, and the parents are never around,” he said. “The parents know that education is the only way to, as we call it, jump out of the dragon’s door, out of poverty. But Qin, who is rebellious, independent and smart, did it her own way.”

博士不博。中国的博士的最大问题是，博士不博。

If Mr. Fan belongs to a new generation of Internet-savvy悟性 filmmakers schooled in Western liberal ideas, his spiritual, intellectual and cinematic influences reflect both ancient tradition and modernity. His father was a college professor and projectionist放映员, and Mr. Fan grew up watching foreign films. Like many of his generation, he broke with tradition by leaving home for Beijing, then gave up a prestigious job with the CCTV network, briefly relocating to Canada before working as a sound man and associate producer on the well-received 2007 documentary “Up the Yangtze,” about the mass displacements移民 caused by the building of the Three Gorges Dam.

“Lixin is not from the foreign-influenced cultural centers,” said Daniel Cross, president of EyesteelFilm company in Montreal, which produced “Up the Yangtze” and co-produced “Last Train Home” with the ITVS television and cable company, which holds the North American television rights. “He comes from the sticks边远, and that’s what makes him unique.”

Mr. Fan said he is a committed Taoist, and his eye for the interplay of beauty and ugliness is influenced by what he calls the “epic poetry” of the director Jia Zhangke, whose 2004 feature “The World” centered on the youthful staff of a giant theme park that replicates the world’s famous tourist spots.

“I see a lot of Chinese philosophy in Jia’s film,” said Mr. Fan.

On his next hoped documentary “I’ll shoot there and in a remote mountain school where Taoist philosophy originated, where they recruit peasant children to teach them Tai Chi with martial art,” he said. “It’s yin and yang, keeping the balance between human desire and what nature can give you.”