“If this ever gets weird, promise me we can just stop, as nothing is more important than loving you.”
These were the words of Omar Rodríguez-López to his childhood friend Cedric Bixler-Zavala in January 2000, on the eve of recording a breakthrough album that would change their lives forever. For a decade they stayed true to this pact, until it was spectacularly broken in a haze of deception, Scientology, death and betrayal. The friends then spent the following ten years trying to heal those wounds. This is a documentary film about the artistic and personal relationship between Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala (At the Drive-In / The Mars Volta). It is also the story of two immigrant outsiders and their desire to create their own place in the world. Told almost entirely through a selection culled from hundreds of hours of intimate footage filmed by Rodríguez-López over the last 40 years, the documentary charts the duo’s intense and profound journey of friendship, brotherhood, love, fame, self-discovery, and sacrifice. A story like no other, the film unflinchingly tackles the greater themes of success, addiction, death, grief, tragedy, betrayal, forgiveness, and redemption head on. An intimate portrait of a lifelong friendship and a look at the world through a whole new creative prism.
