In Spanish, the phrase “problemista” can imply various issues: it could possibly check with somebody problematic, or a troublemaker to others. In writing his debut movie, Problemista, now in theaters worldwide, filmmaker Julio Torres designates the time period to these with a compulsion to create nightmare situations for themselves. “Possibly there’s something which you could take away from the nightmare,” he tells Vogue.

In Problemista, Torres attracts from his early days in New York to play Alejandro, a hapless however whimsical toy designer who’s thrust right into a bureaucratic maelstrom when he loses his job and must safe a sponsor to remain within the States. He units his hopes on Elizabeth, a tempestuous artwork critic performed by Tilda Swinton, who takes him on as her freelance assistant—and her emotional stress ball. Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA, Chilean actress Catalina Saavedra, and Torres’s school roommate Spike Einbinder additionally make appearances, and looming all through the movie is the voice of Isabella Rossellini, who narrates this topsy-turvy maze-run via the U.S. immigration system.

Torres, 37, is a celebrated left-field comedic voice with credit on Saturday Evening Dwell; he has additionally been each a star and author of HBO reveals My Favourite Shapes and Los Espookys, the latter a favourite amongst Latinos of the goth persuasion. However earlier than he constructed this spectacular resume, Torres was my classmate on the New Faculty in New York Metropolis—the soft-spoken son of a civil engineer and architect in El Salvador, most discernible by his sweaters and under-the-radar wit.

“I got here right here in pursuit of being a filmmaker,” says Torres. “I used the instruments that I had at my disposal: not a ton of cash, and never excellent grades. So, I screwed up.”

We first met in 2010, as writing majors and scholar employees on the college’s Welcome Middle. A sterile, glass terrarium dealing with Fifth Avenue, it was designed to enchantment to potential college students in search of a progressive (learn: costly) campus in stylish downtown Manhattan. Behind the New Faculty’s shiny business exterior, Torres and I performed campus excursions on behalf of the admissions division.

As a world scholar, Torres was tasked with giving excursions to oldsters from all around the world—together with Colombian actress Sofia Vergara, whom he describes as “our queen”—however on the similar time, he was navigating the deep labyrinth of U.S. immigration coverage, quietly panicking about his potential to acquire a piece visa after commencement. “It felt rather a lot like wandering in a darkish room, simply feeling round and seeing what comes subsequent,” he says. “I believed, I don’t understand how, however I intend to make the very best of this.”