Who Is Dayani Cristal?

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It starts with the discovery of a partly-decomposed, flyblown body in the Sonora desert. There’s a clue, which is unusual, because migrants trying their luck crossing the US border from the south are advised to jettison anything showing their identity.

The clue is a tattoo: the name Dayani Cristal.  But no person with that name has been reported missing.

Who Is Dayani Cristal? is a documentary about the identification of the dead man, about his family and friends in Honduras, about why he made the dangerous journey north, about the journey itself and how he came to die. It’s also about US immigration policy.

So this moving, absorbing, informative film is both personal and political.

It’s fronted by Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal who thankfully does not allow himself to become  the story, even when he’s crossing the unpatrolled border into Mexico on a tyre-raft (“perhaps all borders should be like this”), travelling atop a train migrants call The Beast, or resting in one of the 50 or so “secret stations” along the route, where the founder-priest says “Migrants are not a threat: they are an opportunity.”

There is solidarity on the road, humanity, and danger, whether from falling off the train to be crushed by the train wheels or from being robbed, enslaved and possibly murdered by bandits. (“You could say it’s a decision about death. Death is everywhere on the road.”)

That’s before attempting the desert crossing itself, a gamble with survival that one old hand says is “like flipping a coin”.

At first sight, life in Honduras seems tough but endurable. Yes, there’s poverty, but there’s also a lovely family and warm friends and time to enjoy quiet pleasures (“That’s how he was – always smiling”). Is this worse than working as an “illegal” in a US abattoir, subject to discrimination, prejudice and harassment?

Gradually, however, stresses appear. One of the children is diagnosed with leukaemia and the bills begin to mount.  Loans are taken to survive. To escape the debt trap and do the best for his children, a spell working in the US looks like an attractive option – perhaps the only option: “I know a lot about gardening. Let’s see if I’ll get rich.”

The scenes in the dead man’s village and on the road are told quietly, without sensationalism, and are intercut with the forensic and bureaucratic process of identifying the man with the tattooed name.

Some of the officials involved in the process are thoughtful and sympathetic to the plight of the migrants who risk their lives to get to the Promised Land. One points out that the desert deaths started only 15 years ago, when the government decided to stem the flow of migrants by choking off established routes. The authorities failed to realised that the pressure to migrate is so great – wouldn’t you try if it was the only way you could pay for a doctor’s appointment for your ill child? – that people are prepared to risk their lives in the Arizona desert.

Deaths have increased five-gold in a couple of years. “How many deaths does it take to say enough is enough?”, asks one official. “We hit 200 one calendar year about 10 years ago. That didn’t do it. We’re just about ready to hit 2,000… There’s got to be some number where someone in Washington is gonna say ‘We can’t have this happening any more’.”

European parallels are obvious. The need to change policy when the number of deaths reaches a certain level applies to the drowning of Eritrean and other African migrants off the coast of Italy as much as to Hondurans in the Arizona desert.

The film also gives voice to a view rarely heard in countries where politicians and media have turned up the debate on migration to a hysterical level: “Migrants are heroes. They are like rays of light shining on the things we must change.”

Or as a friend of the man with the tattoo says: “The US is investing billions of dollars on that [US-Mexico border] wall. Why invest in something which is inanimate? It’s a dead investment. Why not invest in human beings?"

+ Who Is Dayani Cristal? Is showing in London at the Open City Docs Fest on 20 June, at the East End Film Festival on 24 June and at the Frontline Club on 7 July

·  If you want a no-holds-barred, dramatic adventure version of the journey north try The Golden Dream at the East End Film Festival on 21 June.

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