Roads of Fire
(USA, 118 min.)
Dir. Nathaniel Lezra
The global migration crisis is an off-the-books enterprise that generates an estimated $35 billion. That’s big business for an industry that trades in human lives. Moreover, the figure likely represents a superficial estimate. There’s no way to accurately assess the cash flow amid the human flow as asylum seekers make treacherous journeys in undocumented transactions, gambling everything they have on a better future. Moreover, the fact that this crisis even has a monetary valuation speaks to the erosion of values that fuels a worsening situation. When climate change, war, human rights persecution, and social and domestic violence are among the factors forcing people to flee, the human toll remains incalculable.
It’s therefore a tricky process for anyone to capture the scope of the global migration crisis in one film, but Roads of Fire zeroes in on individual stories to convey a microcosm of the situation. Director Nathaniel Lezra ambitiously takes a three-pronged approach to the story with parallel narratives. The doc follows an asylum seeker in America, a human smuggler in Colombia, and a network of grassroots activists in New York City. They collectively embody a broken system.
For example, in New York City, the film introduces audiences to Maria, a 35-year-old asylum seeker from Ecuador. She shares how she fled her home to escape domestic violence. Maria hopes that life in America will provide safety and a better life for her two sons. However, she acknowledges that navigating life as a migrant in the Big Apple proves overwhelming. Besides the sheer scale of the city, her undocumented status makes formal work a struggle. The economic precariousness that instability brings only adds to the mental health challenges of life in limbo. That toll, the film reveals, prevented Maria from filing the necessary paperwork to trigger the asylum process.
Roads of Fire finds Maria at a pivotal moment in her journey. She receives notice that the government is beginning the steps to remove her and her sons from the country—a point she learns via several consultations to help decipher the cryptic letter that arrives in the mail. Father Mike Lopez of the collective Hungry Monks implores Maria to file her papers immediately to halt the removal. This process also forces her to revisit painful, traumatizing events, but she reveals everything: for her lawyer, for the court, and for Lezra. Maria bravely goes all in after surviving both her husband and the journey to America, both of which nearly killed her.
Maria recalls the trek she took from Ecuador to New York. She tells how she, like many others, saved up cash and hired a trafficker who led a group of migrants northward. Roads of Fire retraces Maria’s journey, or one quite like it, by connecting with Jonathan, a human smuggler who operates out of Cúcuta, Colombia. Lezra admirably doesn’t present Jonathan and his colleagues as predators or shady dealers. They’re simply business people who trade in freedom. It’s uncomfortable to watch the transactional nature of these scenes, but it’s the reality of the situation.
Roads of Fire observes as Jonathan and his team outline the costs for the journey: motorcycle transportation, food and fuel, and personnel wages. It isn’t cheap, either, as the ports of departure inspire fringe economies comparable to tourist traps. Essentials like fuel are far overpriced, but leaving without proper provisions risks a life-or-death gamble.
Back in New York, Father Mike is one of many advocates helping migrants in a system that’s designed to fail them. Roads of Fire introduces various busy hands that work together to assist asylum seekers as they arrive in New York after being bussed in from Texas, where the governor offloads them to another state to make them someone else’s problem. There’s a different mindset on the ground in these scenes, however, as the volunteers endeavour to see only solutions. They coordinate beds, connect people with proper resources for counsel and advice, and offer meals to keep them optimistic, comforted, and motivated.
Lezra lets these participants ask some bigger questions that the storylines with Maria and Jonathan invite. For one, workers at the local non-profits wonder why the American government awards the contract for refugee support to a corporation that specializes in hurricane relief. The system simply doesn’t have resources to support people displaced for reasons that prevent them from going home. The helping hands, many of whom are immigrants themselves, ask why everyday Americans must compensate for a bad government deal.
As the film occasionally goes to these on the ground hands in between its check-ins with Maria and Jonathan, the parallels between the two key storylines illustrate how nobody makes such a treacherous journey for reasons beyond necessity. Back in South America, Jonathan coordinates the departure for a new group from Venezuela and warns them about the next phase of the trip: the Darién Gap. The 67-mile stretch of rainforest between Colombia and Panama has no roads. Its dense terrain serves as an unofficial border between North America and South America, and it poses numerous risks.
For one, the difficulty of the crossing poses a considerable physical and mental challenge—Maria recalls being swept away by rough muddy waters. Moreover, with hundreds of thousands of people crossing the area annually, it’s a haven for robbers and guerrillas. Migrants are prone to stumble over bodies on the journey, while being robbed is the least of one’s worries. Jonathan’s group experiences this tragedy firsthand when his radio fails to provide further updates about their status.
Roads to Fire admittedly proves mentally and emotionally exhausting as it shares the traumatic experiences of its key figures. However, these are important and compelling stories that put human faces on all sides of a global crisis. The triptych collectively asks how America backslid to this state of disrepair, too, as the Reagan-era ethos of “Make America Great Again” fails to remember the former President’s sign off that “anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America, and become an American.” Stories captured here precede the second Trump administration, so this documentary merely foreshadows the present state of affairs. Roads of Fire offers a snapshot of a situation that’s only just beginning.
