Filmmaker Joel Vargas ‘14 is drawn to single-take camera shots that keep all the actors in view.
“It creates this effect where you think that what you’re watching on the screen is actually real and unfolding in real-time,” Vargas said.
In his latest film, “Mad Bills to Pay” (2025), Vargas tells the story of a carefree Dominican American man in the Bronx navigating life with his family and pregnant teenage girlfriend through this angle.
He wanted the fiction film to feel like a documentary, describing it as a “magic trick.”
“I think there’s a danger when you’re just entertaining because some people, especially when you’re dealing with sort of marginalized communities and communities of color, then it’s like you’re distilling their experiences for easy consumption,” he said. “That’s not what I’m about.”
The film — which was reviewed by Variety, Filmmaker Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter — was shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it received the “NEXT Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast.” This weekend, he will show “Mad Bills” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Vargas and his team cut “Mad Bills to Pay” into a short film to fulfill a requirement for his graduate studies at the National Film and Television School, which he graduated from in 2024. They took the short film to Locarno Film Festival, where he won a “Best Direction” award.
“It just opened so many doors for me as a filmmaker, but also for ‘Mad Bills,’” he said.
Serving as the film’s director, screenwriter and co-editor, Vargas felt “desensitized” from working so closely to the piece until showing the film at Sundance.
“When you screen it for an audience that has never seen it before and you hear their laughter and their reaction to it, it’s just super touching,” he said. “Puts it all back into perspective.”
Hailing from the vibrant Bronx community captured in his film, Vargas felt out of place when he arrived at Lafayette College, where he was a CaPA Scholar and a Posse Scholar.
“It definitely felt like a fish out of water kind of experience for me,” he said.
Vargas ended up in a FAMS 101 class — a department that officially kicked off his first semester of college — after his engineering class was overenrolled.
A FAMS-focused study abroad trip to London during his sophomore year inspired him to become more involved in Lafayette’s film scene outside of the classroom.
“When I got back from that, I was like, ‘Okay, I want to be more of a yes person,’” Vargas said. “It was kind of insatiable.”
He described the film and media studies experience as learning the “user’s manual” of filmmaking.
“I think they really just gave us a theoretical foundation,” he said. “To not just make films, but understand why you’re making a film.”
He served as an assistant editor on faculty films, organized a film festival and made himself available to help in his classmates’ work. At the time, the FAMS department did not have its own buildings and students used flip cameras to create their films.
“I think Lafayette was very fortunate to have an artist like Joel come into the program because, again, he was just ahead of the time,” said Robert Young ‘14, a fellow film and media studies student.
“That was a time that was fun because it felt very underground and grungy, it wasn’t a physical home, but it wasn’t a physical space, but it was the same nine people that you saw majority of your classes,” Young said about FAMS. “It was a subculture.”
“I often say that I learned more from Joel than he learned from me,” said FAMS professor Andy Smith, the faculty leader of the study abroad trip who now considers Vargas a friend. “He’s a great student, but he’s just this glowing person.”
“Joel is sort of walking, talking, living, breathing, connective tissue, between a Lafayette education and how one actually succeeds in film and media out in the world,” Smith continued.
“Mad Bills to Pay” will have its Lafayette premiere on Thursday at 7 p.m. in Landis Cinema. Before the film, he will be hosting a workshop from 1:15 p.m. to 4 p.m., open to all.
“Lafayette versus MoMA or Sundance, we’re not going to win that fight,” Smith said. “But Joel’s not coming because he needs to show the film again. Joel’s coming because he loves us and because he was us and wants to help.”
“At the very minimum, I just want people to just sit in the movie theater for those 90 minutes and just be with this culture and this family,” Vargas said. “Know their story, hopefully long after the film, and just keep thinking about them.”
