In Spanish, the word problemista can mean a number of things: It can refer to someone who is problematic or a troublemaker to others. In writing his debut film, Problemista, now in theaters worldwide, filmmaker Julio Torres designates the term to those with a compulsion to create nightmare scenarios for themselves. “Maybe there is something that you can take away from the nightmare,” he tells Vogue.
In Problemista, Torres draws from his early days in New York to play Alejandro, a hapless but whimsical toy designer thrust into a bureaucratic maelstrom when he loses his job and needs to secure a sponsor to stay in the States. He sets his hopes on Elizabeth, a tempestuous art critic played by Tilda Swinton, who takes him on as her freelance assistant—and emotional stress ball. Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA, Chilean actor Catalina Saavedra, and Torres’s college roommate Spike Einbinder also make appearances, and looming throughout the film is the voice of Isabella Rossellini, who narrates this topsy-turvy maze run through the US immigration system.
Torres, 37, is a celebrated left-field comedic voice with credits on Saturday Night Live; he has also been a star and writer on the HBO show Los Espookys, a favorite among Latinos of the goth persuasion. But before he built this impressive résumé, Torres was my classmate at the New School in New York City—the soft-spoken son of a civil engineer and architect in El Salvador, most discernible by his sweaters and under-the-radar wit.
“I came here in pursuit of being a filmmaker,” says Torres. “I used the tools that I had at my disposal—not a ton of money and not very good grades. So I screwed up.”
We first met in 2010 as writing majors and student workers at the university’s Welcome Center. A sterile, glass terrarium facing Fifth Avenue, it was designed to appeal to prospective students seeking a progressive (read: expensive) campus in chic downtown Manhattan. Behind the New School’s glossy commercial exterior, Torres and I conducted campus tours on behalf of the admissions department.
As an international student, Torres was tasked with giving tours to parents from all over the world—including Colombian actress Sofia Vergara, whom he describes as “our queen”—but at the same time, he was navigating the deep labyrinth of US immigration policy, quietly panicking about his ability to procure a work visa after graduation. “It felt a lot like wandering in a dark room, just feeling around and seeing what comes next,” he says. “I thought, I don’t know how, but I intend to make the best of this.”