Fierro

As a filmmaker and Army veteran, I was immediately drawn to Rich’s story. I could tell he was aghast at having suffered violent trauma in the most unlikely of places, at a drag show with friends and family. He seemed in disbelief that, after surviving multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he could be forced to confront such horror unexpectedly. Nevertheless, I could also tell he was in familiar territory. I wanted the documentary Fierro to explore that duality, the fact that Rich’s violent experience in war had prepared him to act in this moment but had also wounded him forever. It’s the great irony of war that its destructive nature imparts certain skills and instincts in soldiers that play no part in the civilian world. Often those soldiers are forced to live with their changed nature in shame, guarding their friends and family from a part of themselves cultivated by the state that is never truly decommissioned. Sometimes this nature is borne out in quite suffering, sometimes in self-destructive rage, and sometimes in moments of great bravery. Regardless, the person has been changed forever. That’s what I’m interested in, the collision of violence and compassion in the human heart, and how different people choose to express that eternal struggle, especially those that have sacrificed so much in our name.