Cary Fukunaga on His Debut Film 'Sin Nombre'

Fast-talking and slightly withdrawn, Fukunaga looks every inch the film school hipster you’d expect to find in an NYU coffee shop pontificating on Kurosawa’s oeuvre. And, about a year ago, he probably was.

Today, he’s the writer-director of Sin Nombre, a film about a young Honduran girl who falls in love with a Mexican gang member while they ride on top of a train bound for the American border, which debuted at Sundance to rapturous acclaim, winning both top directing and cinematography prizes.

Sitting down with Fukunaga at LA’s Four Seasons, a hotel that sees a revolving door of stars and hitmakers, he seems comfortably out of place. In a worn vintage t-shirt and light cardigan, Cary, 31, looks too young and bookish to be the latest film school savant to make a major splash on the indie scene.

But it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for.

And Cary Fukunaga is definitely one to watch.

Gossip Sauce: How did you become interested in the plight of immigrants?

Cary Fukunaga: I was doing a short film at NYU for my second year project. It was based on a true story about a group of immigrants that were abandoned in a trailer in Victoria, Texas and while researching the story I learned about what Central American immigrants are going through to cross Mexico and before that I never considered how dangerous the journey was across Mexico. I just always assumed the immigration story was one that takes place right here on our border and never thought about, it never occurred to me, that being illegal could be so dangerous.

GS: And that’s what inspired Sin Nombre?

CF: If you’d told me five years ago that I would be doing an immigration film for my feature film, I would have thought you were crazy. [The short film] wasn’t supposed to be a calling card film by any means. When you go to film school, you make a thesis film and it’s a film you’re supposed to start your career with. I hadn’t made it with that goal in mind. After Sundance, the [short] film went on to win 24 film awards, including a student Academy Award, and people were asking me if I had a feature version of it. I started writing the feature and traveling down and doing research and traveling with immigrants and doing everything I needed to do to tell the story with as much authenticity as possible, and I didn’t think about how I was going to finance it or whether it was a good film to make as my first feature film. I was just going step-by-step with it. After traveling with immigrants and going through some harrowing moments with them, I think there was a sense in me, an emotional attachment that hadn’t existed before, and that’s why I stuck with it to the very end. I was able to insert some of my own personal experiences and some experiences of my family into the story but it’s definitely not from my background.

GS: You’re dealing with an issue that is both volatile and bifurcating: immigration. How did you humanize the story to make it more emotionally compelling for audiences who might have pre-conceptions about immigrants?

CF: I think, especially for Americans because we’re so isolated from the rest of the world, there’s a tendency to exoticize anything that’s not American, even exoticize places within America that aren’t as common. I knew it was something I had to be sensitive to, that whatever I was portraying, the themes had to be universal. Fortunately the themes are universal; the story about Latin American immigration could be any story about immigration or not even about immigration but about a family trying to repair what’s going on with their own families. The main thing was what do these characters really want and then try to make it as personal to my own experience as possible. Not just my research experience, but my own family. And just be respectful.

GS: How did this film come together?

CF: My friends think I’m a really lucky bastard because I wrote the script and pretty shortly after I wrote the script, got into Sundance Lab, and a month after Sundance Lab Focus Features became involved and I never had to pitch the story. So all my friends who are trying to get their movies made want to strangle me. It’s not a common thing and I’ve very grateful for what happened.

—Sasha Perl-Raver