How to turn an iffy prospect into gripping film

Cary Fukunaga, NYU Film School grad, was the hot young director to watch at this year's Sundance Film Festival

Luis Fernando Peña (above, center) in ''Sin Nombre,'' which won best director and cinematography awards at Sundance.

Cary Fukunaga only appears to be sitting in a meeting room at a downtown Boston hotel. In point of fact, he's in the calm before the storm.

The boyish NYU Film School graduate - he's 32 but looks a decade younger - was responsible for one of the few movies to break out of this year's muted, uncertain Sundance Film Festival. Titled "Sin Nombre" ("Without a Name"), it's a startlingly well-directed drama about a little-explored subject: the Central American immigrants who cross Mexico by the thousands, traveling atop trains and aiming for the US border.

The movie, distributed by Focus Features (with whom Fukunaga has a writing and directing deal), depicts a hesitant romance between a Honduran émigré girl and the young Mexican gangbanger who becomes her unlikely protector. Mostly, though, "Sin Nombre" combines documentary-style insights into the harrowing immigrant experience and brutal lifestyle of the Mara Salvatrucha gang in Tapachula, Chiapas, with the propulsive slickness of a Hollywood action drama. Park City, Utah, reaction was thunderous: Variety critic Todd McCarthy declared that "a big new presence arrives on the scene" in Fukunaga, and the film won best director and cinematography awards at the festival.

A theatrical release for "Sin Nombre" is several weeks in the future when Fukunaga sits down with a reporter - the movie opens in Bos ton this Friday at the Kendall Square - and he seems charmingly unaware that he's poised to become the Hollywood flavor of the month. To turn a commercially iffy prospect (no stars, foreign language, downer subject) into a gripping cinematic experience is one thing. To direct a logistical epic involving multiple characters, locations, and trains - as your debut feature - is another. Attention must be paid, and you'd better believe the studios will do so. The question remains: What does Cary Fukunaga want?

Q. What led you to this subject? This is not a story that we know. Was there a connection in your past?

A. My stepdad was Mexican, but he was Chicano, born in California. The closest I ever came to understanding the immigrant experience was only when I was being a bad kid, when he would threaten to send me to work in the peach orchards, like he did when he was a kid. I never thought I'd make a film about immigration and spend five years of my life on the subject. And yet here I am. Sometimes the stories you end up doing are stories that find you.

Q. So you rode the trains with the immigrants?

A. It was very - to say "intense" is not the way to describe it. I got on the train with 700 immigrants one night, with the plan of traveling a few hours with them. And we got attacked [by gangs] about three hours into the trip, just before dawn. Like in the movie, but it was nighttime. They killed an immigrant on the car in front of me. I ended up staying on the train with the Guatemalans I was with for another 24 hours, into the next night. They were collecting rainwater to drink, sharing food, joking, telling stories, and all kinds of emotions took place. When it started to get dark again, I debated whether to get off or not, because I knew that if there were still bandits, they would know I was on the train. Word spreads fast if there's a gringo on the train. When I was leaving the Guatemalans I really felt like I was abandoning them. It was a very strange feeling to happen in such a short period of time.

Q. How did you go about researching the gangs?

A. In prisons. After two years, through gift-giving, through enough India ink and grilled chicken, I was able to gain their confidence to allow them to give me some contacts on the street. . . . It took two years for anyone to admit being on the trains and assaulting immigrants.

Q. Since the film hit at Sundance, have you started fielding offers? Getting any scripts?

A. I've told my representatives to really filter what gets sent my way. I don't want to waste my time reading things that are A) out of my reach and B) are just formulaic genre pieces. But I think that not enough people have seen the film yet on the studio side. So we'll see if that changes over the next two months, if people who have the power to greenlight see it and have a project they think I should do.

Q. If a studio came to you and said "We want you to do 'Watchmen,' or we want you to do 'Iron Man 2,' " does that have any interest to you?

A. I'm not averse to anything as long as the story's good. Genre-wise it doesn't really scare me if it's a thriller or horror or comedy or another drama, as long as there's something about the story that to me seems genuine. This was my first script and my first film. I see the good and the bad in it, and I'm looking to sharpen other parts of my directing skills.

Q. This was a seriously big shoot for a first-timer. Did you ever feel like you were in over your head?

A. (laughs) I'm surprised Focus Features even gave me the film. I think I imagined the professionals I'd be working with would have these miracle answers to everything. The reality is that every film shoot has its challenges. The most fun part of directing isn't working with the actors, it's the problem-solving. You get to the set and the assistant director says, "You know that thing you asked for and we've been planning for the last four weeks? Well, it's not going to be here today." A lot of my time was spent creatively rearranging schedules.

Q. What do you hope your next movie will be?

A. I wrote an adaptation a couple of years ago that I really liked. It's a much simpler story, about a child soldier in Africa, based on a novel called "Beasts of No Nation" by Uzodinma Iweala, a Nigerian-born American student at Harvard. It's a beautiful, first-person story - all fiction - about what it must be like to be a child soldier. I know that [Focus Features head James] Schamus really liked the script but the problem is this market - how do you justify making a film like this if you have General Electric on your back talking about returns? It's a sad thing, because I think there are a lot of films that aren't being greenlit right now - not just my film but other directors' projects - that deserve to be out there and would find audiences but are risks. Would "Slumdog Millionaire" get greenlit now? I don't think it would.

Q. Any other projects?

A. I'm interested in doing a musical, too. I'm taking the "school of Schamus" - he's sending me musical DVDs every week to increase my knowledge of the genre. I've probably watched 30 in the last two months. The problem with most musicals is that I don't like the music. I've been talking about collaborating with a couple of singer-songwriters that I really like, Zach Condon of Beirut, Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy and Arcade Fire, and a couple of others. We've been talking about the problems with musicals as we see them and how to make one that's not just a remake of an old-style musical but really a different kind of musical.

Q. Like "Once"?

A. But "Once" is still about musicians. In a way, it's like those 1930s musicals about stage companies making a musical. The problem for me is how do you make the music work and advance the narrative? How do you make purely visual storytelling take place in between the lyrics? And how does the music happen? Are they musicians, or is it coming out of nowhere? I'm trying to figure out a way to make modern music work for it. Rob Marshall has done a bunch of musicals, but I think the structure of his musicals is pretty classic. I want to do it raw and unprofessional-looking.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movies.