In its weirdness and unpredictability, Problemista is a fresh perspective on the struggles of immigration in the U.S. While navigating a situation that is stressful, unjust, and simply infuriating, the hero of our story uses his imagination to catapult himself out of the despair that immigration is prone to cause its navigators, making life into an adventure rather than a misery-filled obstacle course. As Alejandro is fired from his cryo-freeze archivist job — “But I only made one mistake,” he pleads with his white woman boss, who doesn’t hesitate to terminate him despite knowing he might get deported — he runs into the wife of the frozen corpse he was caring for, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton). Elizabeth is a quirky white woman artist who Alejandro sees as his last chance to get a sponsor for his work visa, as she offers him freelance work to come up with an exhibition for the paintings by her frozen husband. Swinton is almost unrecognizable in this role, a strange woman who is both infuriatingly callous and surprisingly helpful to our hero.
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