Sin Nombre.

Economic migrants are certainly getting a bad press at the present time. What are economic migrants other than people who want to improve their lives for both themselves and their families? Some live in conditions and countries that people would not let their precious dogs live in, so why let people? Admittedly some folk just see another country as having something different to offer be it sunshine or perhaps better schooling for their kids. I myself was an economic migrant some 23 years ago when I choose to move my family to another country. One in which my children were offered a better education system and somewhere where they could actually venture outdoors without adult supervision. Obviously my situation was nowhere near as serious and heart rendering as the migrants we see in the 2009 Mexican-American thriller Sin Nombre.

Written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga who was born in the USA but whose parentage was Swedish/Japanese. Fukunaga was responsible for directing all eight of the first season of the award winning HBO TV series True Detective, a truly remarkable piece of work, as is his debut feature film.    

 

El Caspers only chance in life is joining Mara Salvatrucha and its leader Lil Mago.

Seeking the promise of America, a beautiful young Honduran woman, Sayra, joins her father and uncle on an odyssey to cross the gauntlet of the Latin American countryside en route to the United States. Along the way she crosses paths with a teenage Mexican gang member, El Casper, who is manoeuvring to outrun his violent past and elude his unforgiving former associates. Together they must rely on faith, trust and street smarts if they are to survive their increasingly perilous journey towards the hope of new lives[1].

Shot mostly in Mexico City and filmed in Spanish, the film's title means "Nameless", it won several awards, including prizes for directing and cinematography at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It evokes the hardship and violence of a society that gives no real hope for a future or a life. The only opening for disinfected youth is to join a gang where your life can be cut short at any time. Who can blame these people and others in the same position from trying to improve their lives even at great risk to themselves demonstrated in this excellent movie and in the BBC news programmes over the past months?  

Several of the extras used in the film were actual migrants. Fukunaga said of working with them, "I didn't have to tell them anything—they know how to sit on top of a train” The film stars Paulina Gaitan (We Are What We Are) as Sayra and Edgar Flores as El Casper. The executive producers included Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal. This harrowing authentic movie is recommended for those of you that profess a social conscience and in fact it would not do the back bottoms that don’t have a social conscience any harm to watch it either.

---

[1] Focus Films.

Rosewater.

Jon Stewart was the host of an American politically satirical TV news programme called The Daily Show. In March 2013 he announced that he would be leaving the show to direct his first full-length feature film. It was to be based on the memoir Then They Came for Me by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Malloy and it is an exceptional achievement for his debut film. It recount’s Maziar Bahari’s 118 day internment by the Iranian authorities, most of which he spent blindfolded. It has been suggested that a satirical interview on Stewart TV programme got the London based Iranian journalist arrested as an American spy when he was in Iran to report on the country’s 2009 presidential elections. When the result of these elections was announced not surprisingly the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected even after some very strong pre election support shown for his rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi who some expected to win, but it was suspected that the result had been rigged. Protests followed in all of Iran’s main cities and the world’s journalist descended on the country including the subject of this movie. 

 

Maziar Bahari and his captor.  

During his internment at the Evin prison by the Revolutionary Guard the most distinguishing feature of Javadi (Kim Bodnia) his interrogator was that he smelled of rosewater hence the name of the film.  Gael Garcia Bernal does a grand job of portraying the harrowing events inflicted upon Bahari, showing how he managed to survive the experience with the film suggesting that it was the video evidence of the protests he provided to the BBC rather than the interview that was the real reason for his imprisonment. As well as directing this drama Stewart also wrote the screenplay and since its release he has been accused by Iran’s state TV of being funded by Zionist and of working with America’s CIA. This absorbing portrait of modern world politics does have  a surprising amount of humour considering the situation, which does take the edge of what could be a very disturbing watch.   

Who Is Dayani Cristal?

The widening of the gap between rich and poor is a global problem but none more so than at the border between the USA and it's neighbouring Latin American countries. Marc Silver and Gael Garcia Bernal’s documentary does not deal with the economic migrants that manage to get into one of the worlds riches countries but these that die in the attempt. It's in the Sonora Desert, Arizona, which borders Mexico, that we find the 'The corridor of death' where it is alleged hundreds of bodies lie undiscovered and 700 of the 2000 of those that were found over the last ten years have never been identified - lost to their families and friends for ever.

 

The journey begins.

This documentary is the story one such ‘body’, how the remains were found in the desert, like most of the other unfortunates, with no paperwork or form of identity, only in this case a tattoo spread across his chest which included two words ‘Dayani Cristal’, the investigators had no idea if this was the mans name or some other form of identification? It was on the 3^rd August 2013 that the body was found, the only certainty was that this man was an ‘illegal’. The Search and Rescue Unit of the County Sheriffs Department took the body to the Tucson mortuary in a body bag; various dedicated professionals are tasked to investigate this poor souls identity with only the tattoo to go by. They include the County’s Medical Examiner, the Missing Persons Investigator and the forensic team as well as many hard working public servants from both sides of the border.

Sometimes the journey does not end well!

We find out who this man is and were he comes from, but I’ll only reveal what you have probably already guessed. Our John Doe is a poverty level Farmer trying to eke out a living to support his wife and two children. The film goes into detail about the journey this man has to undertake to reach his goal of the ‘promised land’ and the chance of a better living to allow him to send back money to his impoverished family.

 

Another attempt to reach the 'promised land' goes wrong!

No one knows how many people actually manage to cross into the USA because only the failures are recorded. In the year 2000 there were 19 migrant deaths per year, since then the death toll has increased ten fold!  Who Is Dayani Cristal?  (2013) is the story of people that progress from a dream to a statistic tempted by a capitalism society that if they should succeed to reach will only exploit them! This is a story of people that are invisible in life as well as death. Unbelievable our victim was found just a twenty minutes car journey from the centre of Tucson! A moving, unsentimental documentary, about the tragedy that befalls many economic migrants.