Julio Torres

“I think gifts are a nice way of making people feel seen. A good gift is like a bridge between two people - it's a way of communicating, 'You are on my mind when you're not in front of me.'”

“The first time that I ever tried standup, which is how I found a way into show business, I did what I believed standup should look like.”

“I have friends who feel like they are caught in a liminal state similar to the ones in 'Problemista,' but maybe theirs is insurance, figuring that monstrosity out, or financial instability, which is also obviously a big part of the immigration program.”

“Surrealistic flourishes are a different way of accessing the truth, of accessing real emotion. For some people, the most accurate way of telling a story is a very stripped-down, grounded conversation. I feel most comfortable showing the stakes if I take all these liberties.”

“I feel it's okay to want to ghost. It's okay to not want to see someone after one date, but I think being clear is preferable. You don't owe anyone anything, but you should make the damage as small as possible.”

“I think multiple things can be true at the same time. Someone can be menacing and villainous and awful, but also we can feel for them.”

“I overheard this elderly rich woman tell this other elderly rich woman, 'Oh, remind me to send you that article on how good standing is for you.' That was the moment where I realized that New Yorker cartoons were based on a reality.”

“Funny enough, I don't really recall being read kids' books as a child. I think my truly favorite thing to do was flipping through the adult coffee table books and imagining what those worlds were.”

“When I set out to make my movie 'Problemista,' among the biggest things I wanted to explore was the relentless maze of American bureaucracy, particularly in the U.S. immigration system.”

“We're allowed to pick and choose what we learn from people. We don't have to absorb them in their totality.”

“I'm very interested in just bureaucracy and broken systems.”

“I had been raised on a certain kind of New York movie. Which was always very, very skyscraper-forward, pristine, pretty idealized New York. Then when I first came here, I was just like, 'Oh, there's just garbage everywhere.'”

“I was raised in an upbringing where I was celebrated - an upbringing where I was never made to feel like I should be anything other than myself. I'm lucky that I never felt a pressure to be what anybody's idea of what a cisgender gay man is supposed to be, but I definitely recognize it.”

“Showing what it feels like and the emotional journey of trying to appeal to the humanity of someone who's also trapped in the system, who if they feel like they tap too much into their humanity, then they're going to lose their job. It is anguish, it is a tragedy.”

“For many years during college and after graduation, I felt like I was against the clock and I had to figure out things very quickly or else I wouldn't be able to stay in the U.S. To top it all off, there was the added difficulty that my dream life wasn't to secure a stable job. I wanted to live a creative life.”

“I think we're all full of contradictions; I am someone who is attracted to difficulty but also someone who believes in solutions and finding a way forward.”

“You know, sometimes I see a movie that is two people in a house, and I walk away from it thinking, God, now that's how you tell a story, like less is more. And then I put pen to paper and suddenly I had 'Problemista,' which is the opposite of that.”

“I think that in many ways, my work is very character-driven and not necessarily embodied by me, but definitely me as the orchestrator or the curator of the characters in my universe.”

“We need to look out for the people who seem like their voices haven't been sufficiently amplified.”

“I feel like New England witches are one thing that I, on paper, should like, but in practice, I don't.”