Finnish filmmaker Marko Vuorinen found rapper Vianey Otero, also known as So Icey Trap, on Instagram. But he wasn't just interested in her music. Something about her drew him to Paterson to spend time learning the story of her life and all of its trauma and heartache.
Vianey Otero is only 25, but she can tell story upon story about her life.
The Paterson rapper, known as So Icey Trap, was kicked her out of her mother's house as a teen after it got raided because her boyfriend was selling drugs. When she was 18, she began working as an escort to make money to help her boyfriend, who had been arrested and jailed.
She herself was jailed for four months at Rikers Island after being charged with assault following a fight over a boyfriend.
"I only stabbed somebody like one time," she says in the opening of "Vianey," a documentary screening at the New Jersey International Film Festival on Saturday. "I try not to be so violent."
Otero spent a year and a half in Passaic County Jail, beginning when she was 19, after an altercation with a man who claimed that she robbed him.
"Well, I almost got killed twice," she says flatly in the film, a meditative, no-frills trip through Otero's journey so far, as told by the Paterson native, accompanied by street sounds and a steady stream of ambient music. "I had got stabbed before." (When Otero finally sought treatment after two days, she developed a staph infection and was hospitalized for more than a month.)
Otero may be a rapper -- she takes the "So Icey" part of her name from trap pioneer Gucci Mane's former label So Icey Entertainment -- but "Vianey" doesn't focus on her music. It's not so much a film about a rapper as it is about the making of Otero herself. (She will be at the film festival with director Marko Vuorinen for a Q&A session about the film.)
Vianey Otero first caught director Marko Vuorinen's eye on Instagram. (Marko Vuorinen)
Apart from Otero's voice, there's only quiet or background sound in the documentary. But even when she's speaking in a hushed or relaxed tone, the story screams.
Within three years, which included the period she was interviewed for the film, Otero had to mourn the loss of two people who were close to her -- an ex-boyfriend who was shot and killed and another who died after committing suicide. She had already lost her brother who had been fatally shot during a fight.
Growing up, she spent time in New Jersey with her mother, who had split from her father (he died when Vianey was 14), and the Bronx, where she attended high school. Otero lives in Paterson, where much of the film takes place.
As an underground talent with a devoted Instagram following -- which is how many burgeoning artists now get their start, including the wildly popular Cardi B -- she has performed in New York and beyond. She's best known for swaggering songs including "Walk That Walk" and "Tengo Dinero" (with Miami's La Goony Chonga), in which Otero, whose mother is of Costa Rican and Chinese heritage and whose father was Colombian, raps in Spanish.
Yet for much of the documentary, filmed in black and white by director Marko Vuorinen, Otero is not rapping, but staring straight ahead or just "being," either perched on her stoop eating an ice cream bar or sitting in her bedroom as a recording of her voice plays over the footage.
"I feel like I don't have to say a lot because my aura says a lot for me," Otero says. "I feel like Marko captured a lot of that from me when I'm silent."
Vuorinen, 43, is based in Helsinki, Finland. He first encountered Otero on Instagram, and had been following her for a few months when he asked to meet her in New York. Presenting the idea of making a film about her, Vuorinen was immediately compelled by what he calls Otero's "hard-edged strength and sensitivity."
"I didn't know people from that part of the world could even see my Instagram," she says. "I was just happy he gave me the opportunity to work with him to even give me the chance to be heard."
Otero, who attended Passaic County Community College before dropping out, says she stopped working as an escort around the time she met Vuorinen.
Otero began writing lyrics as as response to a diss song. She wrote in jail as a way to pass the time and express herself but found a purpose when others connected with her music. (Marko Vuorinen)
"For a long time, I hid it," Otero says of her past. She wouldn't openly talk about being a sex worker, though she did eventually tell her mother.
"I felt better once I spoke about it," she says of the film. "When I did, it was just like a huge weight off my shoulders. I felt happier and I'm glad I did because I felt like it's going to help a lot of people."
Otero will be at the New Jersey Film Festival at Rutgers University in New Brunswick with Vuorinen on Saturday for a Q&A session about the film.
In "Vianey," Otero recounts the time when she says a man tried to force her and a friend to work for him. They fought back by stealing his car, driving it away and holding it for ransom. The story actually counts as levity in the film, with Otero being able to smile about the tale now that she's no longer in danger. But she still regularly carries a Taser and knife.
"I look at it back and I'm just like, 'I'm so grateful to be alive,'" she says. "I could have really died. At the time I was so young and ignorant. Now as an adult, I'm just like, 'sheesh.'"
Director Marko Vuorinen.
As a rapper, Otero has also gone by Trap Sade -- on YouTube, both that name and So Icey Trap yield a series of music videos featuring the rapper gesturing and demonstrating her swagger in front of the New York skyline, in sunny California and at a nail salon off Route 4. She's a big fan of both Sade and Amy Winehouse.
"I feel like they use their pain -- they embrace what they went through," Otero says. "They use their emotions and embrace it instead of dwelling on it. They use it to be heard."
The movie was shot over two months in the summer of 2016 in Paterson and New York. Every day, Vuorinen, who completed the film with the help of the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, would take a jitney bus from the Port Authority to Passaic County.
"Visually, I loved the corner of Main Street and Broadway," he says. "... In my mind, the location crystallized Paterson."
Vuorinen, who has a day job working with in public relations with nonprofit organizations, likes to focus on the perspective of women and cover issues like gender equality. His other films include "Eight," in which women in St. Petersburg, Russia talk about dating and relationships, and "Tamara W.," a film about Tamara Williams, a transgender escort in the Bronx.
"My aim wasn't to do a portrait of a rapper," he says of his project with Otero. "It was to do the portrait of a person."
As an escort, Otero had a job pretending, she explains. Now, all she wants to be is herself.
"I wanted to make music for the girls that never felt they were never good enough for anybody, or good enough for society, or didn't feel comfortable in society," she says in the film.
Otero initially dove into writing lyrics while she was in jail. But her first foray into recording music came after she got jumped following her stint in Rikers.
"The girls made a diss song," she says. So she wrote a comeback diss, and a friend asked her to record.
In the past, Otero had been homeless and held at gunpoint. Now she pays the bills by working as a personal shopper for a store and selling her visual art, which embraces a pop art style and is influenced by her history with graffiti.
In May, the Harlem International Film Festival brought "Vianey" to the AMC Magic Johnson.
For Otero, who grew up going to the theater with her mother, it was an emotional milestone.
Did seeing the film give her a different perspective on herself?
"Yeah, that I could sound very intellectual," she says. "There's many sides to me that I didn't know."
"Vianey" has its New Jersey premiere on Saturday, June 2 at the New Jersey International Film Festival at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. There will be a Q&A with Vianey Otero and director Marko Vuorinen. The lineup starts at 7 p.m. at 71 Hamilton St., Voorhees Hall No. 105; njfilmfest.com.
The film will also be screened at the FightClubNY Music + Film Festival at Superchief Gallery in New York on June 23; superchiefgallery.com.
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
