'Choking Man' - in cinemas this weekend

from the New York Daily News' excellent Latino 'Viva' section

Octavio Gomez Berrios has only a few lines in "Choking Man," but off-camera, he has plenty to say about immigrants and his pot-scrubbing lead character, Jorge. In Steve Barron’s film, opening Friday at Cinema Village, 22 E. 12th St., Jorge is a young, painfully shy Ecuadoran newcomer with a grueling job at a Queens greasy spoon. To research the role, Gomez briefly ditched his acting career to wash dishes at a Manhattan bistro. “I learned that the immigrant dishwasher is basically invisible,” said Gomez, 29, whose family immigrated to the South Bronx from Nicaragua when he was 11. “But there is also an amazing humanity between the migrant workers. Everyone backs each other up.” Read full article here