Overview
- The film is now playing in select U.S. theaters via Oscilloscope Laboratories after strong festival reviews at Sundance and beyond.
- Writer-director Joel Alfonso Vargas makes his feature debut with a Bronx-set story told through outlines, long takes, and semi-improvised dialogue.
- The cast blends first-timers and pros, including lead Juan Collado hired about 36 hours before shooting and Destiny Checho discovered on TikTok.
- The story follows a 19-year-old who sells “nutcrackers”—sweet homemade cocktails hawked on New York beaches—as he confronts new responsibility.
- Vargas draws on his Bronx upbringing for detail without claiming autobiography, and he is weighing scripts for a second film set in the Bronx or London.