Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home, an Eye Steel Film documentary about Chinese peasants, is to compete against four other films in the best documentary direction category at the upcoming Directors Guild of America kudosfest.

Fan, who associate produced EyeSteel’s earlier Chinese documentary Up the Yangtze, faces stiff competition as he goes up against four other filmmakers for the DGA award: Charles Ferguson for Inside Job, Alex Gibney for Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Davis Guggenheim for Waiting for ‘Superman, and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for Restrepo.

At the same time, Last Train Home was earlier named best documentary/non-fiction film at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards in December.

Fan’s film follows a single family as migrant workers in China return home during the Chinese New Year to their rural roots.

The 63rd annual DGA awards will be handed out on January 29 in Los Angeles.