Sundance 2025: Mad Bills to Pay, Rains Over Babel, Serious People | Festivals & Awards

The NEXT category at Sundance is always the place to go if you want to see a big swing, and in this dispatch, there are three major ones. Two of the films take different routes to analyze men battling their anxiety about their impending fatherhood. One film is a modern adaptation of Dante’s Inferno. So, in a way, they’re all about a personal hell.

From the first minute until its sobering end, writer/director Joel Alfonso Vargas knows exactly what his debut film should be. “Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)” is a handsomely shot and assuredly executed social-realist film whose startling profundities recall John Cassavetes’ “Minnie and Moskowitz” and Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces.” 

In those films, anxious male protagonists, faced with the realities of their listless lives, are forced to answer what they plan to do with their future. Rico (Juan Collado), the protagonist of Vargas’ film, confronts a similar conundrum. The Dominican 19-year-old lives with his tireless mother (Yohanna Florentino) and sister Sally (Nathaly Navarro) in a modest Bronx apartment. Rico doesn’t really have a job. He spends his days squabbling with Sally, who he gets grounded when he snitches on her and sells nutcracker drinks to lounging beachgoers and party animals. This summer has the hallmarks of an endless one when Rico learns that 16-year-old Destiny (Destiny Checo) is pregnant with his baby. The weighty news doesn’t initially inspire Rico to reevaluate his life; he still acts like a child: keeping money in a shoebox, playing video games, calling his baby mamma “bro,” and refusing to get a job. Rico is a singularly messy character, played with aplomb by a spirited Collado. He pretty much fights with everyone. 

It’d be a mistake, however, to think the film’s dynamic emotions lead Vargas to ever feeling rushed. This film is a sporadic series of episodes, and editor Irfan van Tuijl’s piercing jump cuts snap us into long takes that we’re allowed to savor. Vargas and cinematographer Rufai “Roo” Ajala rely on static shots whose sense of vertical and parallel lines within the rounded aspect ratio frames the inertness these characters feel. Vargas also pulls fantastic, charged performances from his actors, especially Checo, who at first plays Destiny like a kept woman, before revealing the maturity of a girl forced to grow up far quicker than her baby daddy. 

Memorable scenes abound in Vargas’ film—shouting matches and heart-to-hearts—which reveal the cyclical hurt of abandonment felt by these characters, especially Rico. Vargas never judges these figures, especially in relation to their socioeconomic standing. He is always deeply aware of their genuine desire to find the right path. “Mad Bills to Pay” holds firm, propelled by a naked intensity to explore life’s uncertainties.  

I’m not sure where to start with “Rains Over Babel,” a vision so overwhelming I became lost in its kaleidoscopic swirl of vibrant palettes, crazed steampunk costumes, and carnal exoticized sets. I’m also not sure how to describe it. At best, it can be seen as a modern-day queer retelling of Dante’s Inferno. But that feels inadequate and quite trite. Rather, Spanish Colombian director Gala del Sol’s inventive feature debut is a bacchanalian fever dream whose oddball mix of talking lizards, sex dungeons, drag shows, and desperate spirits is a Guillermo del Toro/Wachowskis-spiked cocktail fit for the adventurous. 

It is exceptionally stylish, opening in a surreal aquamarine-smeared home shared by our narrator, Botocatio, and his partner, Erato. A bartender at Babel, Botocatio introduces us to Dante, who’s been collecting dying souls for the grim reaper La Flaca for twenty years. Dante doesn’t remember where he came from, only that he was a soldier. In this slice of purgatory film, he spends this day learning about his past. In the meantime, a sprawling ensemble goes on their own quests too: Jacob, the son of a homophobic preacher, spiritually wrestles while preparing for his first drag show; a recently deceased Monet bargains with La Flaca for a second chance; under the threat of deadly gangsters club owner Gian Salai dispatches his son Timbi to find their missing musical act El Callegueso; blank and her talking lizard Rosa accompany Timbi in the hopes of gambling with La Flaca.   

To put it mildly, a lot is happening in “Rains Over Babel.” Not all of it works; you come to wish the characters felt the emotional weight of purgatory more clearly. You also wish the camera was a bit more daring, matching the otherworldliness of the film. But when the film connects on its many other big swings, it’s thrilling. This is a director with plenty on their mind—homophobia, self-hatred, poisonous machismo, queer communities, and dogmatic religion—and makes a canvas, in this case, the city of Cali, Colombia, to express them. This is a booming film whose ambition can be heard from several blocks away.  

From the jump, directors Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson have a fascinating premise for their show-business satire “Serious People.” Drawing from Gutierrez’s real-life experience as music video directors, the pair’s docu-fiction satire imagines Pasqual, playing himself, with a major problem: His wife Christine (played by his real-life wife Christine Yuan) is 36 weeks pregnant, and he needs to turn down an offer to direct Drake’s music video to be with her. In a bid to take a break and still work with Drake, he offers his directing partner Raul (Raul Sanchez) a plan: Pasqual wants to hire a doppelganger, a social media grifter named Miguel (Miguel Huerta), to take his place. This ludicrous concept should be a home run, but the film, even at 84 minutes, is a chore to sit through. 

The humor in “Serious People” is often too dry and too inside baseball to resonate. The premise’s expected zaniness is undercut mostly because Miguel is such an unlikable character. That is, of course, part of the joke: Miguel is supposed to be an avatar for the kind talentless, confidently wrong self-proclaimed directors who populate Los Angeles. But despite Pasquel teaching Miguel how to act like him, it’s quickly obvious this plan can only end in disaster. Pasquel’s inability to see that—we’re meant to believe the pressures of his impending fatherhood blinds him—stretches beyond belief. Because we know this is going to fail, it’s incumbent upon the film to provide zigs and zags by leaning into the tantalizing fissures and anxieties that occur because of switched identities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. We’re just stuck with an annoying character for the majority of the film. 

That isn’t to say there aren’t some laughs to be had: there is a funny Drake cameo and some heaters about filmmaking—but the winking approach the film takes can’t overcome the majority of the comedy’s odiousness. Similarly, the slick and assured visual language—relying on static frames to keep you locked into the discomfort of the situation—can’t smooth the film’s grating tone either. “Serious People,” ultimately, struggles to provide an emotional reason for one to finish it.