The odds are stacked against Honduran immigrants who try to enter the United States by way of Mexico. They are easy prey for border patrols, local authorities, and especially street gangs, who can attack and rob with little fear of retaliation. Freight trains are the cheapest means of travel, but riding atop boxcars, exposed to the elements, is inherently dangerous and sometimes fatal. Sin Nombre, a Focus Features release, uses this journey as the setting for a drama that carries an uncommon urgency and clarity—in part because writer and director Cary Fukunaga rode the rails himself while researching the project.

Fukunaga translates Sin Nombre as "without a name," the equivalent of John Doe. His debut feature focuses on two storylines: conflict within the Mara Salvatrucha gang, and the efforts of a father to guide his daughter and brother from Honduras to New Jersey. The characters collide in the rail yards at Tapachula, where immigrants gather to find rides across Mexico.

A cinematographer on several previous projects, Fukunaga directed a short, Victoria para Chino, that screened at Sundance in 2005. Based on a real-life incident in which immigrants died in Victoria, Texas, the short introduced Fukunaga to some of the complexities of the issue. "When we think of immigration, we usually think of it coming from Mexico into the United States. But there are also Hondurans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, and it was their lives I wanted to show."

"I didn't choose Sin Nombre to be my first feature," Fukunaga admits. "It was sort of accidental that I walked into the subject. The scripts I was writing while I was in school were…not any less ambitious, but definitely not taking place in the frontiers of southern Mexico. In fact, I had a lot of reservations about Sin Nombre, knowing it was not my story. That's part of the reason I spent so much time on research, so I could get a personal perspective rather than just gleaning off other people's misery."

Fukunaga sought to duplicate that experience in two research trips he took in 2005 to Chiapas and Tapachula. He interviewed police, gang members, border smugglers, aid workers, and the immigrants themselves, and then took an illegal ride aboard a freight train with two Honduran immigrants he befriended. "A lot of what happened on that 27-hour trip, actually within the first couple of hours, formed the basis for what happens on top of the train in Sin Nombre," he explains. One element that transferred from life to film is a plot filled with unpredictable twists, one that shifts in tone from gentle humor to stark violence. Fukunaga notes, "If you see drama or crazy stuff, it happens instantly and then it's gone as soon as it came."

As screenwriter, Fukunaga saw the story in epic terms. "As soon as I read about this journey, when I first heard about these immigrants on the trains, the bandits, the first thing I thought of was westerns. I wanted to shoot this anamorphic, CinemaScope, and really go for that look." More than the look, the nature and scope of the story resonated with Fukunaga. "The themes of revenge and killing the father are definitely the same as you would find in westerns. You can see it as well in terms of the immigrant experience. The wagon train as hope, for example, or looking for a new life and braving a 'Wild West' to get there."

Work on the script started between the two trips; by January 2006, when Fukunaga was invited to the Sundance Lab, he had a completed a first draft. Zack Sklar, an advisor and one of the screenwriters on Oliver Stone's JFK, gave Fukunaga important advice. "He told me the script could be made into a film as it was, and could be good, but that it had a lot more potential. What it was at that point was journalism, really a form of investigative journalism."
Fukunaga realized that he had to flesh out his three main characters—Casper (aka Willy), a disillusioned gang member; Smiley, a young recruit; and Sayra, a Honduran immigrant. "One of the hardest things was Sayra's storyline. In a way, she's the most passive character. As an immigrant, she only has very limited choices. She's on a journey where people are making the decisions. It was difficult for me to figure out what she wanted, something I had to do because you only really find out what someone wants by the choices they make."

In the film, Sayra is played by Paulina Gaitan, a Mexican who was among the most experienced in the cast. Fukunaga insisted on using primarily Central American actors, even if it meant working with newcomers like Edgar Flores, making his debut here as Casper. On top of melding different acting styles together, Fukunaga asked his performers to immerse themselves in a physically demanding production.



Most of Sin Nombre was shot on location. Filming on actual freight trains proved especially difficult. "I was surprised that Ferrosur, the company who let us use their trains, agreed to it," Fukunaga admits. "I'd taken rides on their trains before without them knowing it. They've been accused by documentarians of having some of their guards and conductors complicit in the trade, perhaps even yanking immigrants off trains so they fell under the wheels. It was something I didn't bring up when I was talking with them."

One of the dramatic highlights of the film is a train robbery that takes place on top of a boxcar. In his script, Fukunaga wrote the scene as occurring during a driving rainstorm. Capturing it on film took two days. "That was a very difficult scene to shoot. It was hard enough coordinating what I needed without a shot list, but then being tired, having to shout over the generators and hoses and communicate to 150 extras, just repeat, repeat, repeat," Fukunaga admits. "The extras were troupers. I spent a lot of time talking to people on breaks and thanking them, because I needed them to act, I needed them to be involved, and not just sitting there."

Fukunaga faced developments that might have thrown another first-time director. "The schedule for our first two weeks was all reshuffled the day before shooting started because of some head-of-department changes," he reveals. "I wanted to postpone the start, but it was impossible. It was one of those situations where you don't feel like everyone's ready yet but you just go. I simplified a lot of stuff—for example, when we realized through whatever set of problems we only had one hour to shoot what had been planned for four hours."
But Fukunaga takes pains to point out how his background helped. "You know I've shot a lot of films as cinematographer, never as big a crew as we had here, but I had a sense of how to lead production. I really love being in the center of some sort of chaos. I like problem-solving. I think my brain works best when we're dealing with very concrete problems. I like to be hands-on, I like to be right there. There was no 'video village' on the set or that kind of stuff. I actually really love production."

Sin Nombre won awards for directing and cinematography at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Although he is working on three screenplays (and has new deals with Focus and parent company Universal), Fukunaga wants to direct another film this year, "which probably means something I haven't written," he says. He describes his writing projects as a high-concept science-fiction story, a musical collaboration with neo-classical performers, and a "small" love story. He comes from a family of teachers, primarily elementary school, and became attracted to film after experimenting with cameras in school, where he majored in history.

Fukunaga worries that he might be seen by some as preaching. "First and foremost, Sin Nombre is for the people I was traveling with. Hopefully, they'll go to the movie and not buy a bootleg," he jokes. "But otherwise I didn't think of this in terms of a target audience. Maybe ten years from now I'll be able to analyze my interests better. But actually having traveled with immigrants and hearing their stories [of] leaving their families behind to go work in bad conditions, facing the gangs—that's what drove me, that's what made me want to concentrate on what family means in the 21st century."

Click here to read our Executive Editor Kevin Lally's review of Sin Nombre.