When I saw the poster for Problemista, a film that tackles issues of immigration, I wondered why Tilda Swinton — who stars — was on the poster. After seeing it, I now understand. Written and directed by Julio Torres, the movie takes on the U.S. immigration system and isolation, all packaged in a sweet surrealist bow. Alongside Torres, the film stars Swinton, Rza, Isabella Rossellini, Catalina Saaverdra and James Scully. 

The movie begins with Alejandro (Torres) as a boy in El Salvador. He’s sitting in a field with his artist mother Delores (Saaverdra) drawing pictures. She shields him from the world by encouraging him to create safe spaces for himself, so the young boy retreats inward where he explores the boundaries of his wild imagination. As an adult, he lives in New York City with the goal to become a toy maker with Hasbro. The young man has tried many times to apply for work at the company but is denied. With expiration of his work visa upon him and to pay the rent, he works at a cryogenic center Freeze Corp, a place where folks go to be put in cryosleep to be revived in the future. He takes care of the frozen body of Bobby Ascencio (RZA) that’s locked in a cryotube and meets Bobby’s wife Elizabeth (Swinton), who shows up in the facility causing a ruckus complaining about how expensive everything is.

Alejandro sees Elizabeth as a hydra of sorts who antagonizes him often with her erratic fits, so he wears a block of armor in his visions in his fantasies to protect himself from her and the world around him. There is constant reference to this maze of bureaucracy, depicted by rooms with keys and rooms with locked doors, one on top of each other, where he keeps missing the key to break free of the red tape. It’s plain to see why one would see the world this way when the risk of deportation looms over their head. The style of absurdity is a perfect descriptor of how absurd the hierarchy is.

Torres has an active imagination and whatever he is thinking is exactly what we see on screen. He’s taken a simple story about immigration and human connection, and turned it into a comedic, surrealist fantasy that serves as a critique of capitalism. Even if the concept is kookie, it’s still a style of storytelling that distinctly belongs to Torres; no one would be able to pull this off except him.

The cast is strong, particularly Swinton who is all-in, with the snappy dialogue and outrageous costumes.  In Problemista, she’s an entitled super Karen and is everything wrong with American society, but Alejandro uses that to his advantage. As unbearable as the woman is, she tends to get her way even if it is by screaming, gaslighting and being obnoxious. Alejandro understands he can’t fully adopt this attitude, but he can become a problem for others in his own way.  

Problemista is about authenticity and learning to be confident enough to take up space. Especially as a person of color who often feel invisible, or feel they must shrink themselves in order to fit in. Sometimes you’ve got to cause a little chaos and let that anxiety push you to succeed, which I’m sure Torres had to deal with a degree of chaos to make this film happen. There is something exciting about seeing your work come to life. The first piece is always the most sincere, and honest, but in order for that to make sense to the audience, the cast has to believe in what they’re doing, which is why this film is a certified hit.

Title: Problemista
Section: Headliners
Director-screenwriter: Julio Torres
Cast: Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA, Isabella Rossellini, Larry Owens, Catalina Saavedra, Greta Lee
Running time: 1 hr 38 min
Distributor: A24

Jose Pozo, director of the celebrated Spanish short “Plastic Killer,” is traveling to the Western U.S. for his next feature film, “Unusual Cowboys,” which he plans to shoot this year.

The story follows Milton, a peaceful rancher and occasional musician who loses his daughter in a traffic accident. Her death has a further tragic impact on Milton’s life, leading him to sell his ranch and travel to Montana in search of Caleb, the man who failed to help his daughter in the accident.

It’s a film about two men who in other circumstances could have been good friends. Although separated by terrible circumstances, they share a common passion: Music.

Pozo is set to shoot the film later this year in Lockhart, Texas, and Butte, Montana, with additional sequences planned in Colorado and Wyoming.

The project garnered recognition in the 2020 Big Break Screenwriting Contest, where it landed in the top five in the drama category.

Producing the film are Roger Corbi and Yan Fisher-Romanovsky of FishCorb Films and David Ortiz of Arlong Productions along with Pozo, who is associate producing via his Andorra-based Imminent Produccions.

The feature follows his award-winning short “Plastic Killer,” a black comedy about a troubled woman in Madrid, which premiered last year at the Medina Film Festival in Spain and went on to screen in Malaga. It was one of four Spanish works shortlisted for this year’s live-action short film Oscar.

The film stars Laura Gómez-Lacueva as Amparo, who lives in an abandoned haberdashery with Carmela, a plastic bag that she believes to be her daughter. When a neighbor suffers a mysterious mishap, Amparo becomes a suspect. José Mota and Elisabet Terri also star.

For Pozo, who wrote and directed the film based on an idea by Rafael De Mateo, making “Plastic Killer” was a welcomed return to the director’s chair.

“I have spent most of the last few years as a producer, basically for other directors’ projects,” Pozo told Variety. “I had the need to shoot as an auteur, and although I had previously directed four feature films, I wanted to shoot something powerful, different from everything I had done before.”

Pozo came across the story idea and found inspiration in the concept itself. “I immediately imagined the universe that could be created through it: The woman living alone with the plastic bag, a true reflection of the loneliness in which many people are forced to survive without affection; the hypocritical ecologist who makes her life impossible for going shopping with a polyethylene bag, but then uses all kinds of plastic accessories; the inspector with rare diseases, which hinder his insight. 

“All this told in the key of black comedy, where the situations are the ones that generate humor, but the interpretations are solid and dramatic. For me, this is the key to its success.”

In skewering the hypocrisy of some environmentalists, Pozo is also holding up a mirror to society.

“I believe that in this matter we humans act with hypocrisy in general. Most of us try to be at peace with this otherwise very necessary environmental movement. We recycle whenever we can, and we don’t throw anything on the ground that could end up in our rivers or our seas. But for some reason millions of metric tons end up littering them, and plastics don’t walk on their own; it takes human interaction. 

“This is the message of ‘Plastic Killer.’ The problem is not the generation of plastics, it’s the misuse by humans.”

“Plastic Killer” was produced by Imminent Produccions and Arlong Productions.

Having also directed animated features, such as the Goya-winning “El Cid: La Leyenda” (2003) and “Donkey Xote” (2007), Pozo has another animated project in the works but is currently focusing on live-action.

Working on narrative features, he added, is much more personal than animation: it offers “tangible contact with actors and film crews, where you can transmit and interact more effectively. I feel more comfortable with this.”