Inside the Story of “Problemista” Movie and Laith Nakli’s Immigration Journey

TFD – Dive into the world of “Problemista” movie and Laith Nakli’s personal immigration journey in this exclusive TFD coverage.

A lawyer gives his client a harsh warning while staring across his desk.

He says, “You have one month to find someone to cosign your visa.” “You have to leave the United States if you don’t.”

Another dismal day at Khalil Immigration Law, where those who lose their cases disappear into thin air, and where not even a gold plaque on the wall of the waiting area makes any promises other than the tepid declaration, “We’ll do what we can!”

That should sound ridiculous. As they follow protagonist Alejandro in his frantic attempt to stay in the United States and fulfill his aspirations, audiences of the new film “Problemista” will encounter a number of purposefully bizarre locations, including the law office.

Early on in the film, which features writer-director Julio Torres and opens in theaters across the country on Friday, Mr. Khalil is pressuring Alejandro, played by Torres, to find a solution quickly. Alejandro has met a woman; could she be his sponsor?

With a shrug, Alejandro answers, “We’ll see.”

Laith Nakli’s character Khalil is excited and rushes to scribble on his notepad. Has the attorney developed a novel and compelling legal technique or a concept that wins the case? Not at all.

Khalil smiles and says, “We’ll see,” sweeping his palm through the air as he imagines the words on a brand-new waiting room plaque. “For us, that’s a much better motto.”

It’s one of the numerous amusing scenes that break up the suspenseful film “Problemista,” which emphasizes the unpredictability of the US immigration system and the bizarre detours encountered by those attempting to negotiate it.

Against all the odds and the insane whims of his boss, Tilda Swinton’s character Elizabeth Asencio, an art critic whose default setting is to instigate fights and yell at everyone in her path, Alejandro perseveres.

For Torres, it’s both a fictional and a personal tale.

“I’ve had these emotions for a very long time. In a recent interview with TFD, he said, “It just makes sense that they poured out in a movie.” The former writer for “SNL” immigrated to the US as a college student from El Salvador. And he still recalls the fear he had when attempting to find employment and convert his student visa to a work permit following graduation. “My heart would race the moment I woke up,” he claims.

Long before he played the role of the well-intentioned but inept immigration attorney for “Problemista,” Nakli claims he was all too familiar with that sense of dread. He recognizes his own journey in Alejandro’s experience off-screen. Additionally, he is sharing a side of himself that not many people are aware of while assisting with the movie’s promotion.

Shame prevented him from discussing his history for years.

Nakli has only discussed it with his closest pals for years. However, he claims to experience it all the time.

In a Zoom interview from his New York apartment, he tells TFD, “I call it the dark cloud that follows me everywhere.”

Nakli, a Syrian national originally from Damascus, has resided in the United States for almost thirty years. And it has been over 20 years since his life was turned upside down and he found himself in deportation procedures following his 1998 arrest in New York on federal charges.

He was a champion bodybuilder back then, having trained in the United States and going on to become the reigning “Mr. Syria.”

In 2000, Nakli entered a guilty plea to four counts of conspiracy to possess and distribute controlled narcotics, just prior to the criminal case going to trial. He claimed to the judge at the time that he was employed as a personal trainer and bodybuilder when, out of loyalty, he accepted to act as a courier for a close friend.

Nakli’s testimony states that there was never any explicit discussion about the steroids that were inside the black garbage bags he drove across the city in his Jeep. However, Nakli stated, “I knew what I was going to pick up, deep in my heart,” when he entered a guilty plea.

He was given a three-year probationary period, community service requirements, and a $3,000 fine later that year. He expressed regret for his behavior in court that day and promised it would never happen again.

“America is my favorite country. When I was in difficulty, I felt like I had betrayed this country that had embraced me and opened its arms, and it was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced. to accept me and give me the freedom to pursue my interests,” adds Nakli.

Nakli abandoned his bodybuilding profession to pursue his goal of acting, which he had seen in “King Kong” since he was a young child.

His legal troubles grew as his acting career took off. But as he appeared in films like “The Visitor” and “The Wall,” or in TV shows like “Ramy,” “Ms. Marvel” or “Madame Secretary,” many didn’t know about his private battles. Nakli claims that for years, he was ashamed to tell anybody about his experience outside of his closest friends and family.

His deportation might have resulted from the offense. However, the prosecutorial discretion approach of the Obama administration resulted in the administrative closure of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s case against him in 2013. Although he now has the legal right to reside in the US as a result of that ruling, Nakli claims that the shadow still hangs over him. A mistake or a shift in the political landscape could result in the case being reopened.

He hasn’t been allowed to leave the nation for 25 years. That has prevented him from seeing his sick father and made him decline playing roles in films that are being filmed abroad. He has stayed away from interpersonal connections out of concern for his possible deportation.

And he worries that everything he’s worked so hard to achieve will disappear each year when he goes to renew his temporary green card.

“Every morning when I wake up, it’s in the back of my mind for every action I take, every conversation I have,” claims Nakli.

And through it all, Nakli says he’s become intimately familiar with the tense waiting room scenes that Alejandro’s character goes through in “Problemista” — albeit without the surreal touch of someone vanishing into thin air once the last grain of sand slips through an hourglass with their name on it.

“There’s a pin drop, but it’s not because of the rules prohibiting cell phones.” You can see the faces of the folks. And you witness terror and terror,” he utters. “It’s like the scariest thing when you go in there.”

When Nakli went in for his audition to play “Problemista,” he didn’t disclose the similarities between his life and the movie’s story. However, he claims that as soon as the movie began to shoot, it swiftly came up in their discussion with Torres.

“After we completed the first scene (in the immigration law office), we got a chance to settle down and chat for a short while. I informed him right away. And I believe he exclaimed, “Whoa.” Nobody anticipates that, recalls Nakli.

Nakli’s lawyer submitted an official plea for a presidential pardon in 2022. Nakli claims that if the mercy request is approved, it will make it possible for him to become a citizen of the US and significantly alter his life.

Without a doubt, Nakli’s efforts to obtain a pardon give his portrayal of an immigration lawyer in the movie a touch of irony. Torres says it also highlights a unique situation many immigrants face.

In Laith’s instance, it seems like this would never come up if you were American. Something from the 1990s, perhaps? No, you’d probably never think about it,” Torres said at a recent event discussing the film with the Texas-based immigrant advocacy organization RAICES. “But because the system is so unforgiving, there’s just no moving away from it. … That pressure is just completely unfair.”

His movie shows an impossibly complex bureaucratic labyrinth. He has previously entered it.

“Problemista” has garnered praise from critics for being a “inventive” and “trippy” movie that captivates audiences with its “marvelous mixture of surrealism and social satire” and “charming silliness.”

The magical realist elements of the movie, even at their most fanciful, aren’t all that far from the absurdity of the US immigration system, which are reminiscent of Kafka. Many real-world records are stored on paper and in locked limestone caverns below ground. The legal immigration process can take decades. Some new arrivals face criticism for failing to support themselves, even though the government hasn’t given them permission to work legally.

“‘Snakes and Ladders’ was one of the original titles I considered for the film,” recalls Torres. “Because that is the true sensation.” It’s as if you’ve come a long way, yet now you’ve returned to the starting point. It had an all-encompassing feeling, which I believe is understandable to those who have never experienced an immigration issue. It’s almost like someone negotiating the insurance system; it’s a condition of being. It’s disorganized.

Like Alejandro, Torres claims he was compelled to turn to the gig economy and Craigslist (personified in various bizarre moments of the film by Larry Owens) as he was trying to secure a work visa and looking for a method to pay for it.

Torres claims to have clear memories of the “absurdity” of that era. Additionally, it is portrayed in a very poignant sequence from “Problemista.” The film’s narrator, played by Isabella Rosselini, describes Alejandro’s situation in detail as he is seen crawling along an apparently never-ending stairway composed of bleak chambers that are crammed with filing cabinets:

The following are the game’s rules: To obtain a work visa, you must first locate a sponsor. After that, you have to pay roughly $6,000 in application and legal expenses in order to submit it. Alejandro can only then start earning the money he needs to submit his application and, well, start making money. And he must do it before the fall of the last grain of sand. The maze is impossible to navigate. Unless, of course, he’s willing to bend the rules.

Even though Torres originally contemplated calling the movie “Snakes and Ladders,” he ultimately decided against it, even though the maze scene is eerily similar to that title. He claims that the term “problemista” was invented and that its definition is “someone who thrives in problems or creates art from problems.”

He claims, “The film isn’t an indictment of the immigration system or a documentary that breaks down the system.” “The film merely tells the story of a very particular person experiencing a very particular situation.”

Alejandro is an individualist. Torres adds that he is as well.

He’s hoping he can start over with a presidential pardon.

Nakli, a fellow problemista who also stars in “Problemista,” claims that Torres’ depiction of what it’s like to negotiate the immigration system is nothing short of revolutionary.

According to Nakli, “He really captured the immigrant experience and what it’s like.”

Although Nakli claims to have seen the cloud that looms over Alejandro’s every move, it wasn’t actually shown on screen as the cloud that he experiences every day.

It would have been as if a CGI cloud was always following him around. Since that is the nature of it. This cloud is your imaginary companion, explains Nakli. Furthermore, you have no idea what this cloud will generate. Will the sun eventually poke through it? Or is it going to hail? Will there be a storm? You don’t know.”

Nakli, for his part, sees a glimmer of hope in his request for a pardon. It is listed among thousands of pending applications on a Justice Department website. There’s no word on when a decision might be made.

The actor shared Nakli’s application with TFD, which highlights the fact that the judge referred to him as a “minor participant” in the offense at sentencing and that Nakli has made great efforts to change his ways since being found guilty.

Numerous letters of support from other actors and those who claim that knowing him altered their lives are included in the application.

Nakli’s “inspirational talent” is praised by Ramy Youssef, the Golden Globe-winning creator and star of Hulu’s “Ramy.” He claims in his letter of support for Nakli’s pardon application that Nakli once gave him a camera and assisted him in obtaining a scholarship for acting classes, which had a significant role in the development of his career.

“Laith helps everyone he meets, just as he has helped me. Numerous individuals in New York and globally share anecdotes of how Laith aided them. Making introductions, lending people money, housing someone in between places — Laith is that kind of person,” Youssef writes. “He’s been a huge part of so many people’s personal lives, and careers.”

Nakli’s acting teacher, a former Secret Service agent, notes that Nakli has already served his time for his crimes and shouldn’t be imprisoned perpetually.

Nakli adds that he was probably spared his life by the judge who convicted him and the DEA agents who made the arrest.

He writes, “My dangerous lifestyle as a bodybuilder would have eventually killed me had I continued.”

Nakli claims he wants to share the narrative he was once embarrassed to tell. It is part of the script for his one-man play about his life. And he’s been speaking about it with reporters and others as he promotes “Problemista.”

At the most recent RAICES gathering, he declared, “I’m at a point where I’m very open about it.” “Yeah, I realized my error. I had to pay the consequences of breaking the law. And ever since, I’ve been doing everything correctly.

He claims that another essential component of the America he has grown to know and love is second chances. And he’s hoping that by applying for a pardon, he’ll get a fresh start.

He claims, “I answer every call I get, even if I don’t know the number, because I never know when it might be (the one).”

Nakli, though, asserts that he is emotionally ready for any result.

He differs significantly from the spectral representations of turned away immigrants in “Problemista” in one important way as well.

The well-known actor who has been in numerous TV shows and motion pictures won’t go away.