'Roads of Fire' Review: A powerful and emotionally urgent portrait of migration.
- Romey Norton
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
By Romey Norton - November 5, 2025
With Roads of Fire, director Nathaniel Lezra steps firmly into the ranks of contemporary documentarians who blend cinematic beauty with journalistic urgency. After acclaimed festival runs in Mill Valley, Santa Barbara, and Brooklyn, the film arrives in Los Angeles carrying the weight of its reputation, and, remarkably, lives up to it. This is not a dry policy lecture or a voyeuristic travelogue about global migration. Instead, Roads of Fire is a searing, intimate portrait of movement; forced, hopeful, and profoundly human.
Lezra, whose previous work Don’t Leave Me Behind: Stories of Young Ukrainian Survival demonstrated his sensitivity to people caught in geopolitical upheaval, brings that same empathy and craft to this project. Here, he tells interwoven stories that span continents but share a single emotional current: the relentless search for safety and dignity. The film follows a human smuggler transporting refugees to the Darién Gap, an asylum seeker in New York City, and frontline humanitarian volunteers.
From the start, we’re thrown into the struggle and reality. There’s no gloss, no AI, no propaganda, just raw realism. The footage is immediate but never exploitative. We see migrant camps, border checkpoints, overcrowded shelters, moments of exhaustion, and laughter, music, and small flashes of normalcy that feel almost radical. This documentary makes the stories feel intimate, and audiences feel part of the journey. The film gently and in-depth explains the immigration process in America, and just how difficult and traumatizing it can be. Lezra’s off-camera presence is minimal, with his interviews spare and unobtrusive, really allowing the time and space for these stories to unfold.
Visually, the documentary is stunning; from the orange glow of sunsets, the metallic blues of a refugee boat at dawn, to the flicker of a campfire that gives the film its title. The “roads” here are both literal and metaphorical, pathways of fire that consume and illuminate. There are small sections that include voice-over and written statistics and explanations of meanings, to help educate its viewers and enhance the sections. For example, how the current President Donald Trump speaks about immigrants.
Roads of Fire is political, yes, but only because it’s profoundly personal. The film never tells viewers what to think; instead, it invites them to feel and build their own opinions and views.
If there’s a flaw, the film’s structure occasionally feels too evenhanded, which gives it a long runtime of almost two hours. Each story is given roughly equal screen time, which lends balance but sometimes mutes the emotional crescendo. Still, that restraint fits Lezra’s journalistic ethos: this isn’t about spectacle, it’s about truth.
Roads of Fire has done what great documentaries should: it opens our eyes and refuses to let us look away. We know the immigration system is broken, and at a time when frustrations are high and people are blaming one another, this documentary film helps audiences find their humanity and empathy. You might finish the documentary feeling helpless and powerless, with no end to these many struggles. Roads of Fire is harrowing, humane, and unexpectedly hopeful. This documentary film is for audiences interested in the lived human experience, politics, and policies.
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