An aspiring toy designer from El Salvador must assist an erratic employer to stay in New York City.
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Chief Editor at Filmelier
Alejandro (Julio Torres) is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual and fanciful ideas to life and find his place in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic employer (Tilda Swinton) becomes his only hope to stay in the country. From writer/director Julio Torres comes a charming, surreal, and sweetly emotional comedy about chasing your dreams. Also starring RZA, Greta Lee, Larry Owens, and narrated by Isabella Rosselini.
"Directed, written, and starred by Salvadoran comedian Julio Torres (Los Espookys), Problemista is a comedy that presents an absurd premise and doesn't worry about its credibility, and instead embraces its ridiculousness and runs with it. Set in an unspecified time in New York, Álex (Torres) aspires to be a toy inventor at Hasbro, with ideas as absurd as Barbies with crossed fingers or Cabbage Patch dolls with cellphones. To make ends meet, he works at a cryogenization clinic that freezes patients to wake up in the future (although there's no certainty that such technology will exist). When he is fired, he takes a job as an assistant to the neurotic Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton at her finest), who harbors the unreal idea of curating an exhibition of her artist husband's paintings, one of the frozen patients. With a production design that indulges in camp (closer to Roger Waters than to Pedro Almodóvar), using cheap costumes and ridiculous digital special effects, Torres builds a surreal and amusing atmosphere that satirizes the twisted difficulties of living in the United States (especially for Latin immigrants), the banal and stupid egocentrism of the cultural elites, and the absurdity of corporatism. Its eccentricity may repel some, but if you approach it on these , you'll leave the cinema having seen something truly unique."