Viewers will see Alejandro in complicated, sometimes larger than life situations, as he tries to find himself as an artist and a person in New York.
Inside this surreal comedy, he said, is a true story that is very close to his heart about turning his American dream into a reality.
“I think that when you feel like you’re drowning, all that you care to dream about is that you’re floating,” he said about his experience going through the immigration process, which exacerbated his identity as an outsider.
“So when I was struggling to find some permanence here, my dream was to make it. My dream was to be able to afford an apartment. Have a job. Be able to go to restaurants. And be able to do what I love for a living,” Torres said.
Now, he hopes this personal survival story can connect with moviegoers in deep and funny ways.
At one moment in the film, Swinton’s character Elizabeth abruptly calls out to Alejandro two wildly disparate things that remind her of his Salvadoran homeland: pupusas (stuffed corn cakes that are now popular in New York) and the military’s notorious murder of several American nuns in 1980 at the behest of the country’s right-wing government.
Off screen, Torres sums up his origin country in one word: “scrappy.” And this could also define the path of his character, Alejandro — at times disorganized or incomplete, but also determined and pugnacious in the pursuit of his dream.
Torres has drawn wide acclaim for his comedy’s unique take on politics, culture and identity, and though he’s integrated his own queer and immigrant identity into his work, he doesn’t think his comedy “checks any boxes,” as he said in a 2019 NBC News interview.
Looking back at his career, Torres says that he doesn’t study the market nor rely on industry formulas to pick a project. Instead, he…
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