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Blistering performances.

Which Way Home is a beautiful documentary filmed mostly from a freight train labeled, the beast by the children who mostly ride on the roof as they travel through Mexico on the treacherous journey to the good life in the United States. Ten to twenty percent will die, on average just trying to get to America.Olga and Freddy are a pair of nine year olds from Honduras who are headed to Minnesota to live with relatives. Another, Jose, a ten year old from El Salvador is abandoned by smugglers and ends up at a Mexican detention center. The most intriguing kid is a streetwise fourteen year old Honduran who has been sent by his mother to find work in New York City in order to send money back to her. The film is heartbreaking and the brave young kids are a testament to the yearning to survive of the human spirit and the cinematography is breathtaking. Every American should watch Which Way Home to gain a perspective on the struggles of the immigrants so often denigrated here; it is an eye opener.

This documentary follows several children trying to get to America from Central American or southern Mexico, entirely on their own. These are naturally sad stories, but I have to say they're hardly surprising. In fact, the most surprising thing is that the homes they're fleeing really don't seem THAT bad. But I suppose the siren call of the mythical American Dream is too much for some to resist. Director Rebecca Cammisa wisely stays away from politicizing the situation, and the film is done without narration and only brief informational titles. However, this means there is also a lack of any proposed remedies to the problem. It seems to me these kids are better off sticking it out at home, at least until they're old enough to better fend for themselves. Whatever the case, the material is very engaging as we get wrapped up in the plight of these young vagabonds.

Children who live in poverty and wretched conditions climb on to freight trains bound for the U.S. in hopes of a better life. When they talk of the U.S. they dream of television realities, tall buildings, beautiful people, the land of plenty, smiles all the while on their faces. But on the inside these kids are filled with pain. To reach that dream, they go through hell. Burglarized and beaten all the while hungry with the potential of being raped and murdered, all for the sake of trying to get a job in the U.S. to feed their family or go to school. This 16 year old boy talks about witnessing a mother and daughter being raped by 15 men and there's this tear in his eye that can't quite drop. His pain is suppressed. All these children attempt to drown their pain, to bury it, all the while hoping, praying, for that one chance that they may have a better life. It's hard to review this movie and not want to talk about immigration policy. But I won't, I'll let the movie do that for me and hopefully people will begin to open their eyes to some of the harsh realities the U.S. immigration policy creates. Here's hoping for a better tomorrow.

Objectivity is hard to come by as one watches this film about children wandering away from homes that cannot sustain their basic needs. The knowledge that none of it is fictional or manipulated for any effect other than that of cinematic value heightens the viewer's deep involvement with the children themselves. Nothing seems artificial. The story is spontaneous, dictated by real events rather than "directed."Of course there will be critics who lurk behind the camera's eye, as it were, finding fault with presumed motives and attaching political meanings to what they wish beforehand to find in the facts of this film's production. It takes a hard heart, however, to dismiss the simple premise that children ought not to be confronted with the perils of an adult world without the stabilizing presence and guidance of someone -- anyone -- able and willing to step in and help.Think of it this way: If these children were from any place other than Mexico or Central America, would that premise be easier to accept? What if they were French, English, German, or American kids riding freight trains together with all manner of adult men of the most desperate kind?It is not my intention to construct a straw man, but I find it reprehensible to hear as I so often do living on the Mexican border ignorant opinions chastising foreign people and governments for creating as it were the conditions that put children in such peril. The point should be to find ways of alleviating the suffering and preventing the deaths rather than creating draconian laws and policing borders. There are ways to do it without continuing to put up with the conditions we see in this film.It is withal a beautifully constructed piece of cinema, a real must see.