Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
Description
Ricardo is an underemployed 19-year-old Dominican American who spends his days squabbling with his sister, being hollered at by his single mom, and (illegally) selling homemade alcoholic beverages called “nutties” on the beaches of the Bronx. A perpetual adolescent, he’s argumentative, defensive, and emotionally immature. When it’s revealed that he has gotten his underage girlfriend Destiny pregnant, he swears he’ll get his act together and be a good father if she moves in with them. However, as the film conveys through wry comedy and poignant insights, Ricardo’s path to manhood is a challenging one, fraught with moments of self-sabotage, emotional abuse of his family and Destiny, and belligerent behavior with bosses. With the characters shifting rapidly between English and Spanish, director Joel Alfonso Vargas has crafted a debut of great verisimilitude and empathy. The arguments between the characters feel unmistakably real, but so do the love and affection between them. —Rod Armstrong
Biographies
Joel Alfonso Vargas was born in Manhattan to a Dominican family and raised in The Bronx, New York. In addition to graduating from the National Film and Television School in February 2024, he is a former Fulbright Scholar and holds an MA in documentary filmmaking from the University of the Arts, London. He also studied narrative film production at USC. After making a number of short films, he makes his feature debut with Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo). He was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2024.”