Brave Citizen

In the thought-provoking drama "Brave Citizen," a retired professional boxer turned high school physical education teacher navigates her complicated life after being stripped of her championship title. Haunted by the ignominy of losing and facing a multitude of financial constraints that forced her to abandon her once-lucrative career, she is forced to find a new purpose. Her wayward past follows her into her modest profession as a teacher and physical education instructor. Many see her merely as an enigmatic, boxing-champion-turned-teacher who manages the unruly after-school hours while the school's other staff have long left for the day. However, off the wrestling mat and beneath her cheerful demeanor, this boxing icon faces daily troubles that keep her from shuffling past the bitter memories and turbulent circumstances her past bestows. Several months have passed, and a particularly unsettling case of teenage violence sets events in motion. A local, seemingly unscrupulous teenager attacked and almost savaged a younger classmate right within the high school's compound. Witnessing the nightmare through a school window, this battered, determined, and formerly illustrious boxer is filled with utter futility and extreme, pent-up disappointment. The more her efforts in the peaceful classroom setting amount to nothing but ineffectual self-control, the more this enigmatic schoolteacher represses an overwhelming truth -- growing numb is no escape from life's harsher realities. Meanwhile, a repressed individual fighting hard within the limits of the moral fortitude that once stood her strongly rooted but appears increasingly rickety - feels like now facing such violent incidents might either lift her consciousness, drive her to extremes of fury or to desperate, lonely isolation. Some violent impulses remind her of when she intensely beat her first opponent towards winning her boxing title. Something beckons for the reformed – former boxing champion past – that's no longer part of her daily routine. She has no thought for why except that it touches a latent reaction due to years before as "her first fight". In spite of the school counseling department attempting to intervene and foster goodwill between local residents via implementing new outreach programs for school programs and community relations, no attempts – perhaps due to her fresh determination within feeling unable to find her immediate immediate presence accepted - the newly found inner resolve helps ignite this already disillusioned boxing-icon-turned-teaching icon towards seeking a means to intervene systematically. Enacting the sort of fearless action that rekindled what got her in the top end of the boxing league many years ago – a clear manifestation of pure, decisive bravery. Breaking through several years of the silence within, which after so much humiliation serves as a protective barrier encapsulating her core soul - decides her next - step. Pounding uncontrollably at an aggressiveness so hard it has started quivering her hands now she's on her path of searching for actuality - She acquires her trusty boxing gym boxing gloves. Under that isolation from having committed an un-precedented violent outburst outside after using it to re-actualize feelings stirred through an unforgivning past; they become such an inconspicuous mask for a hidden, deep and authentic figure. Next evening as her fragile resolve still trembles outwardly leading her eyes closely keeping an ultra-aware step on the path of every stray emotion ready to follow into action - suddenly as some students near this troubled area loiter, the unexpected outbreak unfolds further in intense close confrontation with an enemy so evil as seems to mock deep agony she finds herself being pushed towards what starts the beginning of new life experiences. Using much heart over reasoning or guilt, she confronts and furiously swings both of those durable gloves against her once innocent - but now sullied by life's hardened, hurtful atmosphere - young, once promising student who had perpetrated the harm. For once, this action manifests self-realization and recognition even after it marks the unfortunate event of violating terms and conditions in getting such wrong side of the law by throwing a fight outside. For this high school teacher-turned-ex-fighter in a much subdued setting while working under pretense that looks fairly routine her true change, and change can trigger the inception of a whole new person.