Julio Torres describes himself as a mix between the comedian Eugenio Derbez and the astrologer Walter Mercado. He moved from El Salvador to the United States in 2009 to study literature at The New School in New York, from which he graduated in 2011. At 37 years of age, Torres premiered his first film in the United States (Problemista, 2023), co-starring with British actress Tilda Swinton, winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Michael Clayton.
Swinton is no stranger to the silver screen, starring in films such as Pinocchio (2022), the first installation of The Chronicles of Narnia series (2005), and various flicks from The Avengers franchise. In Problemista, the star joins forces with Torres, who debuts as a film director. To complete the ensemble, they make the film with one of the most notable independent film studios: A24.
Torres began his career as a stand-up comedian performing in bars in New York City. Thanks to a competition that he found on Facebook, he met a manager who connected him with Saturday Night Live, the storied program celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Torres worked on SNL as a writer, and from there his career soared.
In 2019, HBO released Los Spookys, the first series written entirely by Torres and starring the actress Ana Fabrega (Father of the Bride, 2022) and Fred Armisen, another SNL alumnus.
Torres often plays characters that are eccentric, introverted, or even endowed with supernatural abilities. He opens his 2017 Comedy Central special quipping, “I’m a vegan, and I’m so sorry.” In the special he wears a silver jacket, speaks slowly with awkward pauses, and converses with a crystal. He then reads from a diary that he alleges to be written by Melania Trump: “Donald and the others get so mad when they watch the news sometimes. Oh, they get so mad. I just hope they don’t take it out on me and turn me back into a cat.”
Perhaps it’s fitting that Torres landed at A24, a studio that has placed its bet on original scripts in the past decade. It has broken barriers with its Oscar-winning productions, Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022) and The Whale (Darren Aronofsky, 2022). When A24 offered him the opportunity to write a film, Torres finally managed to steer his own ship.
For Julio, Problemista is his most personal work thus far. The film recounts, with an autobiographical tilt, the adventures of Alejandro, a young Salvadoran immigrant who must secure a U.S. work visa to follow his dreams of becoming a videogame designer. Along his journey, he meets Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an eccentric art critic married to a painter who only paints portraits of eggs. The artist has been forced to spend time in hibernation in a cryogenic capsule to keep himself alive until the future, when his paintings will be considered masterpieces. Alejandro must help Elizabeth organize an exhibition, in honor of her frozen husband, in order to obtain a work visa.
The film had a limited release in Salvadoran theaters on August 28. The following day, Julio Torres sat down for this interview with El Faro.
I want to begin this conversation by discussing your origins. How did comedy become so central in your life?
If you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, and they say astronaut, I was the child who’d say that he wanted to live in New York. That dream must have entered my head after seeing Home Alone, or something silly like that. When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I became very curious about film and I often went to a video rental shop. I would watch, like, four films a week: that’s how I developed a desire to make movies. I didn’t even want to direct, but rather to write, specifically for television shows and movies. The big question, however, was always how and where. Obviously I didn’t know anyone who made movies. I met, through some friends, a couple of people who had made a documentary about El Salvador. But that’s more like journalism –– that wasn’t my cup of tea. I wanted to write fiction. That’s how my desire to live in New York and my teenage curiosity about writing films came together.
I applied twice for a scholarship at a university in New York. And after three years ––I don’t know if they felt sorry for me or what–– they gave me a scholarship that made it possible for me to come. I didn’t go to a film school because the university that gave me the scholarship didn’t have a film program. They had literature, so it was like, well, I already have a card that says I’m a publicist, which at least helped me kill time. So I said to myself, I’m going to kill a little more time now in New York. I did that and then I graduated. In the U.S. they give you a one-year extension, if you’re an international student, to get a work visa. I entered that one-year period looking for another way to extend the grace period, to see how I could get into the world of film. As I was doing this, I felt like I was running out of time.
I had come all the way from San Salvador; I was here in New York but just scraping by. I wasn’t doing what I thought I wanted to do, and I didn’t know how to get started in writing television shows or movies. It suddenly occurred to me that I could start by doing comedy shows. It came to me while I was working as a coat checker, which involves people coming to a place with their coats and giving them to you and you giving them a number to keep. I liked that job because it was so monotonous.
What had the most impact on your experience as an immigrant in the United States?
I was in limbo. I didn’t come here as an immigrant with few options; I was lucky not to suffer from any big hardships. I was the kind of immigrant whose parents had money. They’d come to visit, they didn’t need to work here, they’d have a good time more or less, and then they would return to El Salvador… But I did feel that I was neither from here nor from there. I didn’t know how to sift through my limits and my privileges. What worked best for me was imitating the path of my American colleagues here: graduate, get a job, and see how to stay afloat –– just with the limitations of not having citizenship.
Navigating that limbo made me feel lonely. I thought the only way to break through or show what I could write was to do stand-up. Here, if you google, “New York. Stand Up. Open Mic,” it gives you a list of five a day. You just pick one and go.
In that world I started meeting people who wanted to be comedians. I then signed up for a contest that I had found on Facebook. There were several rounds. I made it to the final round and the prize was that they’d take you to Los Angeles, where you would perform your set for a group of agents and managers. I won. And that’s how I met my agent who told me, “I want to work with you.” He started sending me applications to write for different television shows. I applied to write for Saturday Night Live; it was there that I began getting into what I wanted to do.
With all of this context, can we now say that Problemista is an autobiographical film?
Yes, definitely. It’s a metaphor. I think that 75 percent of it is true. Many of the events are true. But what I was most invested in communicating was how I felt. What it feels like to be stuck in that limbo. What it feels like to be neither from here nor from there. Navigating that was like trying to make a film that feels honest to the emotional experience.
I recently found out that you began writing your film at least five years before production. How was this creative work process?
At that time I was already working on Saturday Night Live and I had already written––I hadn’t directed, but I had already written several shorts, which apparently caught the attention of a lot of producers. What I wanted was the story of an immigrant and I didn’t want something autobiographical because it seemed tedious. I felt like my story wasn't interesting enough to make a movie. But then I started trying to write and the voice of this character, which became the character of Tilda (Swinton), started to grow. Writing her was really fun for me. I started thinking of my story as my experience of getting this work visa, and I started tying it to that, along with the fantasy of a fairy tale. I thought of the character of Tilda as the villain in a fairy tale.
I had been brainstorming in a notebook for years, but it wasn’t until 2020, when everyone stopped being able to move around due to the pandemic, that I was alone and began writing the script for real. I started showing drafts to producers, and then the script got to Tilda, who had seen Los Spookys. And she said, “Yes, I want to work with him,” because she is, as we say in El Salvador, arrecha, or bold and forward. She doesn't care how old or young a director is, how prolific or not he is. If she sees something interesting, it doesn’t matter if the role is big or small. If she sees an interesting world, she goes for it.
So your initial idea was not to direct?
No. We thought of other directors for the film ––from Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, 2005) to Gus Van Sant (Elephant, 2003) to Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004)–– but none of them made sense. Those who had read the script kept saying that there wasn’t any space for them in the text. They couldn’t add their personal touch since it was already so distinctly developed. Through chatting with Tilda and some other people, I flirted with the idea of directing. I decided to follow through with it.
How did the script land at A24, a production company that usually prioritizes horror films?
Yes, they have really gotten into horror movies. But it’s a more auteur kind of horror, a sexy horror. Through them, I actually had the opportunity to structure the script. There are many ways to make a movie, and what they gave me was a real gift. They told me, “Write what you want to write. We will give you the money to write. We will read the script, and if we like it, we will make the movie.” And that’s how it went; that was the contract. They really liked that Tilda was committed to doing it, and they were excited by the risk of having me direct, because it was more of an obscure choice. But that’s what makes them A24. It’s quite possible that another production company wouldn’t have had the courage to do that.
In the last few decades, a great deal of films have been produced that address immigration, thought normally through a documentary format, a sociological focus, or a tragic perspective of the immigrant experience. Your film does have a social backdrop, but your style appeals more to fantasy and even science fiction. How did you make these aesthetic and ideological decisions?
It’s the most honest way in which I can write. My experience as an immigrant is not a tragic one. I don’t think there’s a correct or incorrect way to write about immigration, but given that I’ve suffered very few hardships, I was allowed to discuss my experiences with a different tone. This movie captures things as I have felt them. I think that portraying things in a very tragic way would have been emotionally dishonest. That’s not my journey; that has been the journey for other people.
Do you not fear that this perspective might clash with your own compatriots, or those within the Latino community?
To be honest, I don’t write or do anything thinking about what others will say. I don’t do things thinking about who they’ll be for, either. I’m not saying, “This is the immigrant experience,” either. I’m not saying, “This, and only this, is it. And if it’s not like this, it isn’t valid.” I’m just saying that this is how I see the world.
At times, when I’m doing publicity for this film, I feel like I’m Miss El Salvador. I feel like people are crowning me as Miss El Salvador, and like they’re saying to me: “Wow, you are representing your country. What are you going to say, you who represent all the citizens of El Salvador?” No, I am a Salvadoran who has had the opportunity to make this film, but I am not saying, “Well, this is it, case closed, that’s all!”
Problemista addresses immigration, and you are now living in a country approaching an election in which the figure of the “immigrant” has taken on political relevance. Is there something that particularly worries you about the U.S. presidential election in November?
I’m worried because I don’t see any option that will be ideal for immigrants. I’m worried because I don’t see a genuine interest in immigrants [in the candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump]. I’m seeing again that the best option is neither of them. When you start looking into what they’re tangibly going to do with the border issue ––which is just one of many issues–– I am concerned that both of them are sort of imperialists. One says things in a fear-provoking way; for the other, you have to read between the lines. But, obviously, Trump coming to power again would be disastrous.
How do you currently relate to El Salvador? Are you up to date on the situation here?
My sister no longer lives in El Salvador. But the rest of my family still does, so what happens in El Salvador obviously affects me, whether directly or indirectly. I keep coming back to this idea that I feel like I’m neither from here nor from there. But, of course, many things about El Salvador still worry me, such as the economy.
And now as an adult, making decisions in the United States means having to think not only about myself, but about my parents, too… thinking about how to continue supporting them, and how the decisions I make affect them.
That’s a very immigrant mentality…
Yes, those are the side effects! It’s Problemista: Part Two. Because even if I didn’t see things that way at the time, my family’s support was an investment. So yes, it is very much an immigrant thing. It’s the metaphor of the bird that has already left the nest. Though it has learned to fly, it must now see what it can bring back home. That’s how I am and that’s how many of us are, because as we know that what keeps El Salvador afloat, in part, are those of us who send money. Which is scary... What would happen if one day that stopped happening?
As for other things happening there, Nayib Bukele is obviously frightening. You could tell from the very beginning. That was always the fear, that he was going to come in and not want to leave. And that’s the same fear felt here with Trump, that same idea of having the crown and not letting it go. Sometimes the things that Trump says feel familiar, as if they were from the Third World. He says whatever he wants to say and everyone applauds him. He says that he’s going to put all these people [undocumented migrants] in jail because their condition is their fault. There’s a parallel there [with Bukele].
What can we expect in El Salvador after the November U.S. election?
A Kamala administration would be like what we have historically known: a United States that tells you “Don’t come” and remains in its position as the world’s police force. A United States that pulls its head out of the sand, looks up, and says, “What are you guys doing over there? Why do you have so many prisoners?” With Trump it would be more like one king supporting another, and so the Salvadoran “king” would be able to do whatever he pleases. Trump doesn’t care who Bukele imprisons without due process, who gets imprisoned for only possibly being involved in something bad. Trump likes that idea. And if we get scared into thinking that only this way ––with these kinds of extremes, such as the state of exception–– can one live in El Salvador, then that is what they will sell. If you have in your head that this is the only solution, then it is understandable how someone ends up thinking that a Nayib or Trump figure is necessary. I understand how they did the math to arrive at that conclusion, but, for me, the formula is incorrect.
*Additional reporting from Omnionn. Translated by James Langan.
