Filmmaker Mary Mazzio's Underwater Dreams is timely because it deals with immigration reform. And the movie, which played for a week this summer on various cable networks before opening nationwide in theaters, is pleasant for locals to watch because it's set here in Phoenix, specifically at Carl Hayden High School.
Mazzio's movie makes points about class distinction, underdogs making good, and the raw deal we give to "illegals." It's a sweet story about how a group of Carl Hayden students, all of them children of undocumented immigrants, entered a sophisticated underwater robotics competition sponsored by NASA in 2004 — and won. Competing against colleges, including engineering leader MIT, the four high-schoolers took top honors with a robot made from PVC pipe and duct tape. The victory changed the boys' ideas of who gets to succeed in life and how, and they returned to Phoenix empowered and determined to prevail. Later, the students' victory led to their involvement in immigration reform activism and passage of the DREAM Act. Bravo.
