EntertainmentTelevisionHBO documentary 'Which Way Home' turns spotlight on would-be immigrants from Mexico, Central America


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HBO documentary 'Which Way Home' turns spotlight on would-be immigrants from Mexico, Central America

By David Hinckley
DAILY NEWS TV CRITIC

Monday, August 24th 2009, 10:58 AM

WHICH WAY HOME
Monday night at 9, HBO

There's a brief moment in "Which Way Home" when Kevin, a 13-year-old Central American boy, is bouncing a basketball at the Houston detention center where he's being held until he can be sent back with his mother.

Kevin shoots a couple of baskets, then starts bouncing the ball on his head, soccer-style.

In life as in sports, Kevin is caught in between.

"Which Way Home" looks at a lot of Kevins - Mexican and Central American children as young as 6 who are trying to make their way to the U.S. and what they're sure will be a better life.

This perilous journey, at best, sends them into a de facto "system" that ranges from sympathetic denial to indifference to outright hostility.

Around New York, the blowback from that system is usually found in debates. Down by the border, it takes the form of teenagers found dead or close to death in the desert or by the railroad tracks they saw as their passage to that better life.

It's those children on whom filmmaker Rebecca Cammisa trains her cameras in "Which Way Home," a documentary that tackles the almost unfathomably complex immigration issue by zooming in on some of its youngest victims.

Much of the documentary revolves around "The Beast," a Mexican freight train that runs north from Honduras and Guatemala.

Thousands of would-be migrants illegally hop that train every year. About 5% are children traveling alone.

Desperate to lift their families from poverty, or reunite with a parent who went north years earlier, these children must navigate a grownup world.

Yet Cammisa makes it clear they are not grownups. Facing long odds at best, they become prey for smugglers and a hundred others in the indifferent world through which they must pass.

Olga and Freddy are 9. They are Honduran. Olga's mother lives in Minnesota. She says that when she gets there, she envisions happy times playing in the snow and wants to grow up to be a doctor.

Cammisa catches them at a stopover. They have no plan, they say. They are just pushing north. They say God will protect them. Cammisa reports that when she tried to find them farther up the line, she couldn't. Maybe Olga made it to the snow. Maybe not.

Most of these children do not. They get as far as the Home of Migrants, a private organization near the border that offers food and shelter. Or they make it as far as the Immigration Service, which tries to feed and protect them, but can neither let them through nor fix their lives.

There's no sentimental voiceover or music here. It isn't necessary. Nor is it necessary for "Which Way Home" to say out loud that until all this isn't happening, the "immigration problem" isn't solved.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com

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