Julio Torres

And that really gave Tilda the fuel for the character of just imagining that every time that Elizabeth sees her reflection in the mirror, she's adjusting her bangs, she's adjusting the size of her fringes, and she gets so angry about the hairdresser who promised her that she would look exactly like the photo she showed her in a magazine.

We made this whole fantasy of like she walked away from the hair salon with all these products that she's supposed to use every day, but of course she doesn't.

And then the look, we really wanted to capture that woman in the art scene, Lower East Side, with a hint of like groupie, who has good taste, but there's always something that's like a little off.

Yeah, so early in the film, we see that the mother and son character have a bond and a relationship they're creating.

And she creates this...

little castle, which is interesting that you use the word fort because that is sort of the intention of it, is to keep him safe and sound and away from danger.

And this sort of magical little structure that's in the movie was designed by my mother, by my real mother.

And I, you know, I love having a piece of her in what I do.

Is she still in El Salvador?

Yes.

Yeah, my whole family.

Yeah, and we always have a project together, whether it's coming up with a coat rack for my apartment or I have an event that I need clothes for and then I send her sketches of what I'm thinking of having made and she gives me her feedback or she shows me the back that she's making for herself.

We always have a back and forth of collaboration and I have really come to find that same joy in filmmaking because that's what being a director is.

A director isn't...

an all-knowing oracle creator who can create single-handedly a world from the ground up, a director relies on collaboration and getting to work with people who can physically do things that I can't and having them feel excited and seen by what we're doing is, I think, a testament to the way I grew up

Completely, yeah.

They were encouraging but very nervous about me going off on my own and trying to find a life in an environment that was completely foreign to us in a field that it was utterly foreign to them.

You know, there's no picking up the phone and saying, hey, my son is interested in being a writer-director.

I had never met a writer-director.

anyone who does what I do and so yeah no they were very oh my god I mean the first I think two years every time I spoke to my mother on the phone which was often she would tell me to look both ways before I cross the street as if you know that wouldn't occur to me but I was definitely very very protected but I felt like I had a a drive in me that I wasn't ever going to be able to explore within the confines of their safety