Hasbro should listen to the star of Julio Torres' new film, Problemista

Tilda Swinton is the kind of actress whose presence on screen makes a movie a little more enchanting. Whether she's playing someone otherworldly, like the vampire burnout Eve in Only Lovers Left Alive, or someone more down-to-earth, like the academic Alithea in Three Thousand Years of Longing, there's something superfluous about the way she inhabits a character, as if she's always been there there , waiting for the story to emerge around her.

But in Problemista — a surreal New York saga starring writer-director Julio Torres as Alejandro, a young man facing deportation after losing his job — Swinton is angrier than usual. Her character, Elizabeth, is a shifty art dealer who Alejandro starts working for in a desperate attempt to get a work visa as he clings to his dream of one day making weird toys for Hasbro. Elizabeth is frustratingly uncommitted to sponsoring him, perhaps due to her erratic nature, or some deeper pain on her part – Problemista is partly a story about these two unusual souls coming to understand each other.

Recently, Swinton spoke to Polygon from her New York hotel in support of the A24 comedy, in a brief but wide-ranging conversation about difficult bosses, the woes of immigration gender, and how work desensitizes us to each other.