Last Train Home: Filmmaker Bio

Lixin Fan (Director/Director of Photography), based in Montreal, was born in China, where he grew up as his country was modernizing and rapidly integrating with the world. Starting off as a journalist with the national television broadcaster CCTV, he traveled the country and experienced first-hand the inequality caused by China's rapid economic expansion. This inspired him to become a documentary filmmaker with a focus on social issues.

Last Train Home is Lixin's debut feature documentary as a director. In 2006, he worked as associate producer/soundman on the acclaimed feature documentary Up the Yangtze (POV 2008), about the world's largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam. The film was an Official Selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, won the Genie award as Canada's top documentary feature and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In 2003, he edited the Peabody and Grierson award-winning documentary To Live Is Better Than to Die, a breakthrough film on China's AIDS epidemic.