“Vomero had once watched Firmeza on YouTube as he mixed frenetic tunes in a living room. In early 2017, the director was mourning the loss of a good friend, and had packed up his belongings into a storage unit, leaving his home in New York behind for a while. When he met Firmeza in Lisbon, he realized that they had this fresh grief in common, and the film began to take shape.
The pair spent days talking about life and death — via interpreters — and nights bouncing between clubs and friends’ houses. ‘It wasn’t just his music,’ Vomero realized, ‘But how he looked at life, and how he was coping with the loss of his father and becoming a role model to his family, and then still being an inherently spiritual person who doesn’t really care about religion so much. I just got lucky to have found Firmeza beyond his music.’
- The FADER
The pair spent days talking about life and death — via interpreters — and nights bouncing between clubs and friends’ houses. ‘It wasn’t just his music,’ Vomero realized, ‘But how he looked at life, and how he was coping with the loss of his father and becoming a role model to his family, and then still being an inherently spiritual person who doesn’t really care about religion so much. I just got lucky to have found Firmeza beyond his music.’
- The FADER