Amber Laroux is a pro MMA fighter who gets knocked out for the third time which puts her career at risk. Advised by the doctor and the coach, she goes back home to her mother to get some rest. While there, Amber is haunted by the memories of her past and the ghost of the family dog until she confronts the suppressed memory about her father’s suicide and let’s go of the burden of his dark legacy.
Yelena worked as a journalist since she was a teenager and continued on that path until she got utterly disappointed in the field due to the lack of freedom of speech in Russia at the time. In order to escape severe censorship she had made her way to America over a decade ago to follow her dreams to tell stories that were important. She had received her bachelor’s degree in Communications and kept looking for ways to combine her storytelling passion with her career and personal goals. She has eventually found herself on the path to become a filmmaker and went back to school to earn MFA in Directing from Chapman University. As a former journalist she still has a deep passion to tell stories that have to do with social issues. As a writer/director, she is committed to tell stories that center around female protagonists showed from a uniquely female perspective.
While exploring female driven subjects, I often run into feedback advising me that a strong female character must win at the end in order to show signs of true power. I think that it is a typical male type of approach to story and the reason why it is so widely accepted is because men have dominated storytelling for centuries. I enjoy happy ending endings just as much as the next person, however I disagree with cliches.
Although this film doesn’t deal with gender disparity as my other films do, the character’s gender is important because I feel female fighters are underrepresented in popular culture. My protagonist walks away from a potential fight, something Rocky would never do, and by doing so she wins an internal, emotional battle rather than a physical one. She admits to herself that fighting is no longer right for her.
We need more stories that end in a nontraditional way and escape the formula of “lose, work harder, win.” I am not claiming this is a groundbreaking concept, but that it shifts the sports drama genre by showcasing the hard truths and realism behind a fighter’s life.
As a society we are obsessed with watching people get hurt in the name of sport. In recent years there has been talk about irreparable damage various athletes receive in order to bring audiences the pleasure of “panem et circenses”(bread and circuses). However, we haven’t seem to evolve that much since the Roman times and nowadays sports organizations are the ones who hold the power and collect large sums at the expense of their athlete’s health. My film focuses on two generations of one family that experience a similar fate and brings the attention to the personal drama of an athlete who suffers physical consequences of a career.