Cary Fukunaga

Director Cary Fukunaga’s extreme dedication to his craft is initially hard to sense. In conversation, the 32-year-old is affable, laid-back and unsentimental when discussing his process.

Yet, to research Sin Nombre, his debut feature about a Honduran girl and a Mexican gang banger riding trains illegally into the United States, Fukunaga immersed himself in the world of Central American immigrants. He spent two years train-hopping across Mexico, dodging police, bandits and stray branches with would-be immigrants.

“With the gang members, it took a year and a half of research with them before I started getting the harder details,” he says. “It’s time – you have to commit to hanging out or traveling with them.”

The resulting film, which picked up cinematography and directing awards at the Sundance Film Festival, is a curious contrast of sublime beauty and blunt poverty – exactly the qualities Wieden+Kennedy needed for its first major Levi’s campaign, Go Forth.

Inspired by poet Walt Whitman, the spot “America” is a conceptual call-to-arms. Shot partially in a New Orleans slum, Fukunaga created four intersecting storylines to evocatively underscore the campaign’s message of hope and optimism.

On what subject could you be called upon to speak as an expert for a documentary film?
By the time you’re done researching a film, you could’ve made a documentary with the amount of research you’ve done. Right now it’d probably be immigration but the next couple of films could be about something different. Documentaries are less about the subject and... more about finding interesting characters.

Do you think advertising can become a personal expression for a director?
Yes... to a limited degree. At the end of the day, the creatives, then the client have final say on cuts and even takes, so the absolute expression of the director can only exist in his/her director’s cut. The final product will retain elements of all involved, but won’t be the personal expression of the director.

What are some projects you have coming up?
I’m working on a contemporary fairytale operetta/musical at the moment. I don’t think they’ll be any dancing in it, but you never know. It’ll be a completely different movie than Sin Nombre. Q

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