DRIFF Alumni Spotlight: Paul Daniel Torres

Paul Daniel Torres and his crew on the set of ‘The Mis(RE)education of The Furious Yet Invisible Five.’

Since 2017, DRIFF has cultivated a space for audiences to engage with diverse filmmakers from the Durham Region, across Canada, and around the globe. Our Alumni Spotlight series highlights the impacts and achievements of past and present DRIFF filmmakers working in media arts today. 

If you were with us in 2019, you may have come across the work of filmmaker Paul Daniel Torres, or just Danny to those who know him. His short film ‘Do Turtles Swim in Maple Syrup?’ earned the Best Student Film Award during the festival, enthralling audiences in an eclectic exploration of what it means to be Latin-Canadian. The film follows Latinx teen Tony Tenorio as he’s robbed of his chance at a better life by a racist thug, and is sent on a journey throughout Toronto where he’ll either succumb to racial stereotyping or become the “hero” he always wanted to be. 

But it’s not just Torres’ storylines or art direction that capture our attention. As a director, writer, actor, spoken-word poet, and youth worker, Torres is dedicated to uplifting a new generation of racialized youth storytellers. Whether that’s through cinema or his community-centered work as a youth facilitator, Torres has no shortage of inspiration for anyone who wants to get into the media industry. 

Working both in front of and behind the camera, Torres understands what it takes to tell a narrative. Born in Toronto to Ecuadorian parents, Torres possesses a natural confidence that comes off as inspirational, making you want to grab the nearest notebook or camera to start recording your own story. His latest film ‘The Mis(RE)education of The Furious Yet Invisible Five,’ an experimental horror-thriller-docu-drama about decolonizing the educational system in Canada, was nominated for six awards at Reelworld Film Festival in 2021, including Standout Director and Writer. Amidst all his recent success, we caught up with him to learn more about his journey into filmmaking and all the details of his latest projects. 

What inspired you to start using film as a medium to tell stories?

I was always into film as a little kid. My parents didn't want me to get into film, but it felt like we were at the movies every Tuesday and Blockbuster every Friday. That's where the love of it grew. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Spiderman. That character really resonated with me… When I was young I wanted to be Spiderman, but I realized I couldn’t have superpowers. So as a kid I was researching people like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the closest things to Spiderman that I could find. I kind of decided I wanted to help people, to go into law or be a doctor or engineer, and that was my vibe for a while.

I’m a youth worker right now, in addition to being a filmmaker. But I’m a filmmaker now because those movies helped shape me. Every time I’d watch a movie, I’d change my career choices. I’d watch Star Trek and want to go into physics. In high school I had my first bouts with depression and suicidal thoughts, and I’d remind myself, what would Peter Parker do? What would Rocky Balboa do? So I came to a point where I realized that these movies keep making me change my career choices. These movies are the things that I look to whenever I’m in a bad place, when I’m struggling to get up in the morning. 

I want to help people which stems from this five-year-old kid who wants to be Spiderman. That’s really where everything started… I get upset when people try to dismiss a film, being like, oh, it’s an escapist film. That’s not the case for me. Yeah, you could be looking to escape for two hours, but you’re still going to a film looking for a lesson, a theme; something to take away from that film that's going to help you study harder for this test, or find a new job, or get the money to pay rent. One of my favourite directors has this quote that’s like, “I make movies for the average Joe who is struggling to pay rent next week but still decides to go see one of my films because he needs to.” That’s where I want to be as a filmmaker. I want to make films for everyday people. I think we dumb things down for the general audience […] but I want to be able to make films and big adventures that are for kids like me, children of working class parents who need these stories to keep themselves going. I want to be able to give them good stories. 

What kind of narratives are you drawn to making? Is there a theme or question you’re always looking for answers to?

I think the theme is finding a sense of belonging, either in a place or in a person or in yourself. For me, I grew up modestly and Latino in a rich white neighbourhood… I live in a neighbourhood where I never really got along with anyone. When I went to Sheridan [College], I was surrounded by people who didn’t look like me or have my experiences. I always felt like I was on the fringes, but it comes from my lens as a young Latin man.

I’m trying to find myself in film. Race and social class affect your sense of belonging. My films are about finding a sense of place, but what is place as a racialized child of immigrants, as a settler in Canada? When I made ‘Turtles’ I was like, yeah I’m Canadian, I belong here. But now I’m like, I’m a settler, I shouldn’t be here. Nobody gave me permission to be here, so why am I tying my identity to here? I’m being used as a tool for harm, because we use the idea of multiculturalism as a tool for harm for indigenous people. So I try to use this theme of trying to find yourself through the lens of decolonization and postcolonialism.

’Do Turtles Swim in Maple Syrup?’ won the award for Best Student Film at DRIFF 2019. How did audiences respond to that film?

It’s weird. We screened it in Seattle, and we had these two little white boys who were like, yeah man, I got all the hip-hop references! I made this film specifically for like, Latino kids from Toronto, and it was these random white kids who got it. I didn't really get a response from the Latin community during the festival run. I think that’s because of the fact that Latinos don’t really have festivals here. There’s a few [festivals] but they mostly concentrate on Latin-American cinema from abroad […] I released ‘Turtles’ on my Instagram after the festival and it got picked up by [the account] Toronto Latinos, which was really affirming because I got a lot of other Latinx creatives around my age being like, yo, I felt really seen, please don’t stop what you’re doing. That moment I was really like, wow, there’s a lot of responsibility and gratitude to be able to be a storyteller to people that look like me.

The most important thing though is that my parents came around to film. When it screened at TIFF Next Wave they were like, you might actually be kinda good. My granddad took me aside and said, “You come from a long line of artists, and this film is proof that you have all of your ancestors’ gifts.” I had felt such a distance from my family because I went into film, so that was really affirming. That felt amazing, and that was really the best reaction for me.

How do you find collaborators that share your vision for what you want to create?

Honestly, I don’t. My collaborators are all my close friends… I have my go-to people that I work with, and these are the people I'm gonna fight for and make my career with. With [my new film] ‘Fried Fish and Plantain,’ I felt my friends were there to make the film and also because they genuinely believed in the script. As a director, it’s important that everyone needs and wants to adapt the story. You want every single person to have a sense of ownership. Of course it’s my movie because I wrote it, but it’s everyone’s fucking movie. Even though I had a tough time at Sheridan, I met these awesome and amazing people and I can’t find people that are better at their jobs.

People give advice saying you shouldn't work with your friends, but after a hard day on set, when you have someone you genuinely love right beside you, it puts a little pep in your step, a little light in your heart to really go forward. I’ve been very blessed that I'm the summation of the people that love me. I am grateful that there are people that love me, who are also very talented at what they do, and that they believe in me as a director.

What can we expect from you next?

Right now I’m working on the edit for ‘Fried Fish and Plantain.’ It’s a romance. I was thinking a lot about the power of love and healing and loss. I lost my grandmother the September after I graduated so I was going through a lot of loss, romantically also [...] So I ended up writing a romance called ‘Fried Fish and Plantain’ about two kids in a situationship who were hooking up before the pandemic, and were talking during the pandemic, and the movie is about their first date after lockdown. They’re trying to navigate being new people and also trying to navigate that they've had these other losses, the loss of a grandmother and a loss of home. The film is about if we’re able as humans to move on from trauma and loss and still be vulnerable and open to love.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get it into the short program at Slamdance [...] And then hopefully we can make it a feature.

What advice do you have for anyone starting out?

I think what you have to do as a filmmaker is to concentrate on working on yourself. Learn where you come from and what affects you and be honest in your writing and work. When you show people that you're honest and vulnerable and you’re willing to go places as an artist, people will be like, yo, this kid already has this immense amount of emotional intelligence, and that’s something you'll never get from reading. You’ll only get that emotional intelligence from figuring out who you are.

You’re not going to learn how to write by just writing. You’re going to learn by paying attention to your conversations. You’re going to learn how to write by falling in love and getting your heart broken. Keep doing what you love. Like, if you love playing soccer, then you know what’s going to teach you how to write? Losing in the finals in the last seconds. Overcoming an obstacle. You need to learn what it’s like to actually live life and go through the motions and reflect that and what that looks like realistically in life. That’s what you’re trying to do [as a filmmaker], is to present life as vulnerably and authentically as you can, so try to live life as brilliantly as you can and open your heart as much as possible. 

On a technical aspect, learn story structure. You need to know how narrative works. You need to understand the difference between plot and story. That’s the first step. Then work with cinematographers who know how to shape light. Work with people who know how to shape tone and emotion through sound. Work with people who you know you can depend on. [...] As a director, you need to make sure that every single person on your set feels like they are the greatest person to ever touch a script or camera. Every time you’re on set, you should say, “I am the greatest filmmaker with the greatest team of all time and we're about to make the greatest movie.”

But if you want to fuck off from film for two years to go play basketball or volunteer at a soup kitchen, then do it. The best way to be a filmmaker is to be more than a filmmaker. Trust yourself. You’ll get there. 

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This interview has been shortened for editorial purposes.
Thank you to Paul Daniel Torres for sharing generously throughout this conversation.

Hannah Polinski is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently based in Southern Ontario.

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