Paying It Forward: A Film for All of Us, by the Bronx
Story Ave—described by writer/director Aristotle Torres as a “Film by the Bronx”—premiered as part of SXSW’s Narrative Feature Competition and won two awards. Now, the film is available for streaming on Hulu. Painterly, poignant, this impressive first feature surprises despite its depiction of predictable hardship ... and reminds us to look in instead of away.
A Bronx native raised by his grandfather, Luis, Torres cut his teeth in the music industry, managing and directing music videos for major artists including J. Cole, Nas, Kanye West, Ludacris and The Roots. Now, after helping other artists, Torres is ready to help himself—without forgetting his past.
His first feature is a bildungsroman about the world he grew up in: the tale of a young Black graffiti artist in the Bronx who—after his home-life implodes—is faced with a choice. He has to prove his worth by joining a gang, or accept help from a man whom he tries to rob. Starring Asante Blackk (When They See Us) as the troubled Kadir and Luis Guzman (Wednesday) as a widowed MTA employee with an alcohol problem, Story Ave began in 2018 as a proof-of-concept short film about a “stick-up gone-right” that just happened to catch the right person’s attention.
Aristotle Torres. Photo by Corey Nickols, Image courtesy gettyimages.com
“It was so random,” Torres laughs. “I was at a barbecue, talking about storytelling, when this stranger asks permission to share my film with some colleagues. I’d been hoping to turn it into a play, so I was like yeah, whatever. Then Sundance reached out to me three months after that.” He shakes his head, still incredulous. “I was doing the biggest gig of my career, this multi-million-dollar Starbucks commercial, and I’d never written anything more than 10 pages, so I said ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t write a script in two weeks, but I’m so honored, and I’ll submit on day one next year.’ And Sundance goes ‘Nope. We think there’s something here. Can you write a script in five weeks? Your first draft will be up against everyone’s fourth draft. It’s a long shot, but if you wanna take the risk, here’s the code.’ I quit that Starbucks job and started working on Story Ave the next day.”
Torres’ script made the cut: he spent four weeks as a Sundance Film Fellow in Utah. “They literally believed I could make this movie a year before I did. Even when I got to the lab I felt like an imposter—and the further I got down the rabbit hole, the more that imposter syndrome kept piling on.” It was self-doubt vs. hope.
“I know what it’s like to feel alone, to feel lost, to use artistic expression as a way to communicate,” Torres said. “Growing up in a place where you’re set up to fail, finding something that lets you feel purpose is a blessing.”
Story Ave centers on Kadir’s passion for art, his use of graffiti to communicate feelings he can’t express in his broken home. Torres hopes the film—which refracts parts of his own journey from loneliness to self-actualization—will empower youth to seek their own creative outlets ... and take pride in their roots.
In Story Ave, Luis Guzman’s character is loosely based on Torres’ grandfather, Luis Torres, who raised his grandson after he was orphaned—and who’s now one of the film’s proud producers. Onscreen, Kadir and Luis bond at a diner; Torres explains that he and his grandfather ate at that same diner daily.
“He definitely taught me empathy,” Torres said of his grandfather. “One night, there was a homeless boy sitting outside on the sidewalk. My grandfather took him back to our place, gave him food, let him shower and tried to find him a home. It was those memories that helped me develop my film.”
“I think we all wish we had a Luis in our life,” Torres muses.
Luis Guzman and Asante Blackk meet at the diner in Story Ave.
Torres hopes Story Ave will inspire similar insights in others. “I’d like people to realize that the kid sleeping in the corner of the train might just be going through some shit, that the kid who robs someone might be pushed into a corner and trying to survive. I don’t mean this as a blanket statement, but I hope that young people, especially those that grew up in the hood—who are really responsible for all the trends—can be considered with a bit more empathy.”
That’s why he bills Story Ave as “a film by the Bronx.”
“There’s this moniker of the Bronx being this super grimy, ghetto place, but I think it reps New York in its truest form: an epicenter of culture where you’re gonna get a little bit of everything, including some of the most influential artists. My number one priority as a filmmaker is to represent this community authentically, these people, stores and culture that I’m so inspired by.”
By 2020, Story Ave was fully prepped: funded, cast, locations ready to go—but then came COVID. “Everything stopped. I got really depressed, doubting myself and my purpose. It forced me to slow down and figure out what mattered most.” Torres turned to his own backyard, a square span of earth bordered by chain link fences and a towering construction project—much like the gentrification looming in Story Ave—and began digging.
“That saved me. I learned to choose the right seeds for my soil, to water it every day. I learned that growth takes time.” By surrendering to the natural order, Torres stopped fixating on results and embraced process. “If you don’t wake with a pain in your stomach because you can’t make your movie, you probably won’t make it,” Torres sighs, wounds still fresh. “Gardening taught me patience, persistence. It forced me to trust myself, to be more confident. That’s part of the process, too.”
Persistence paid off. Torres wound up with kale, edamame, watermelon and—after a series of false starts and heartbreaks—a whole new production team for Story Ave. With the help of star/EP Luis Guzman, Jaime Foxx’s production company Foxxhole plus powerhouse indie producers Lizzie Shapiro (Shiva Baby) and Gus Deardoff (Nine Days), he was once again ready to shoot ... with only half his original budget. For a guy whose Instagram bio is “fix it in pre,” a play on the film adage “fix it in post,” these last-minute pivots required grit. Now, he laughs: “Production is pain—but you’ve gotta keep going.”
Ultimately, the budget shortfall bred creativity. His finished film feels realistically rough-hewn, “wabi-sabi”—the Japanese phrase for beauty found in imperfection—a form of instinctive expressionism that evokes the Bronx. It also celebrates contradiction. “My co-writer Bonsu Thompson and I challenged ourselves: like, ‘How do we make all these characters feel right and wrong at the same time?’” Instead of heavy moralizing, they honored inherent conflicts, those push-pull sides of ourselves that we all struggle with.
Metaphor, symbolism, even misdirection sneak into almost every frame of Story Ave—including Kadir’s art. Rich with dark strokes and a deep sense of foreboding, Hera of Herakut’s Street Art fills in for Kadir’s murals and sketches. Also impressive is Torres’ choice of DP, Eric Branco (Clemency), who secured SXSW’s Special Jury Award for Cinematography. They went with an intimate 4:3 aspect ratio, in part because of the verticality of graffiti art, in part to avoid gritty ‘Black film’ clichés. “We wanted to capture youthful Black faces in the old Hollywood style, intentional with composition and motivated by emotion. Like the old masters.”
Torres’ visual grammar has echoes of early Spike Lee, Gus Van Sant and Ryan Coogler, with nods to Carlos Lopez Estrada’s Blindspotting and Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12. Bouncing between goofy camaraderie and heart-wrenching drama, Story Ave also makes room for magic—Kadir literally floats through a funeral; two artists debate integrity in a dark room; best friends paint a mural across the screen; a gang hops subway turnstiles in slow-mo—but then slice-of-life realism hits like a bucket of water. A gang’s exchange with a local business owner feels like Goodfellas; a high-octane argument feels like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf; an MTA-montage gives a wallet the emotional weight of Balboa training Creed.
In other words, Story Ave embraces its scrappy upbringing, but lets a lot of love shine through the cracks. And now it has begun building an audience: for Torres, the film’s world premiere at SXSW 2023 is just one more beginning. He knows some may find his plot predictable—a troubled kid whose only hope is to make it out of the hood—but for him, that’s the point. “That’s exactly why this tale feels so familiar—until we fix the neighborhood, kids will be troubled.”
Torres flashes a smile: he has spent much of his life finding hope in the weeds. The way he tells it, he’s both Kadir and Luis: unresolved but still trying—a form of Bronx Zen. “My motto is ‘Better than yesterday.’ Not like people fighting to be hot all the time, fighting to be in that blue part of the flame. The most successful artists I’ve worked with, the most impactful iconoclasts are the ones who are just in the moment. They show up early, they’re thankful, they’re full of grace. They’re still growing.”
Story Ave is now available to stream on Hulu.