In 2013 I went to New York to see a revival of my favorite musical from the 1970’s, and I stayed at the Roosevelt hotel. It was classic New York, with traditional elegance, marble in the lobby, grand chandeliers, and a beautiful bar where the well-heeled sat with cocktails. In 1929 Guy Lombardo began leading the house band of the Roosevelt Grill. He held an annual New Year’s Eve radio broadcast at the hotel with his band, the Royal Canadians.
In 2022, the Roosevelt closed, having failed to recover from the pandemic, and Mayor Eric Adams made a deal with the owners to use the hotel as a shelter for asylum seekers. Now, it has become the Casablanca of New York, where applicants line up down the street waiting. They sit, eat, and even sleep in lines 10 deep in hopes of seeing someone about their application. Trump has expressed concern with this arrangement, and the shelter will close in mid-2025, un-housing all the legal asylum seekers there. In the course of its time as a shelter, the property was a first stop and temporary respite for 173,000 migrants.
“…brings the global migration crisis home to ground level…”
Lezra talked about his motivation for making the film with Newsbreak’s Misty Scwhwartz: ”Initially, I made it because I was in New York, the city was grappling with its own inability to coherently respond to the influx of migrants being bussed in here by the Governor, and the crisis was just very visible. People were camping out on streets in front of shelters and soup kitchens, NGOs were frantically trying to fill the gaps in humanitarian support, and the sense of chaos was very real. It interested me to document how that sense of instability would impact the city, the volunteers in the organizations stepping up, and the migrants themselves.”
As mentioned before, this film was made before the 2024 election and the reign of ICE terror being visited on immigrants in 2025. It was bad then, and one can only imagine how much worse it is now. It is baffling why people continue to risk their lives to come to such an inhospitable place, and yet still they come in large numbers. Lezra shows the grim impact on real people instead of just statistics. Watching Roads of Fire brings the global migration crisis home to ground level for those with the fortitude to internalize Lezra’s documentary and live with seeing the human faces of the problem. None of the interviewees or those featured in the film are named for obvious reasons.
"…Lezra shows the grim impact on real people, instead of just statistics..."
