As testified by numerous documentaries, many journalistic investigations and countless lived experiences, the United States immigration system is a purgatorial, deliberately confusing, dehumanizing hell. Getting here, let alone staying here, can be a confounding maze of dead-ends and Kafka-esque double binds, an impossible staircase of bureaucracy. The metaphors come easy; the system lends itself well to magical realism, as poignantly realized in the new A24 film Problemista, in which immigration is a literal maze of drab cubicles, an hourglass counts down one’s days till deportation, and applicants are physically disappeared by a bland visa denials.
Problemista, the winsome debut feature from the writer/director/actor Julio Torres, is at its best when the erstwhile SNL writer and creator of the HBO show Los Espookys applies his considerable talents and dry whimsy to the experience of being ground down by such a cold, illogical behemoth. Like Torres, Alejandro Martinez is from El Salvador and harbors creative dreams in the US. While his mother (Catalina Saavedra), an artist who whipped up Alejandro’s childhood imagination into fantastical escapades, remains at home, Alejandro ekes it out in Brooklyn (Bushwick, to be exact, and it feels pretty exact).
