Sport of Failure

Sport of Failure follows filmmaker (and boxer) Dawn Dreyer through two decades of creative survival, mental illness, healing, and adaptation — blending archival footage, vérité, and animation to explore what it really takes to build a life worth living after the story you thought would save you falls apart.

Sport of Failure follows filmmaker Dawn Dreyer — a neurodivergent artist and boxer navigating the menopause portal — through two decades of creative survival, mental illness, healing, and adaptation. Blending archival and cell-phone footage, vérité, and hand-drawn animation, this intimate, often funny documentary embraces the messy, recursive process of its own making. At its core is boxing: a sport of failure where progress comes from making mistakes on repeat and learning to trust the body to keep moving forward, even when anxiety floods the brain and executive function grinds to a halt. The film traces the origin story of Bipolar Girl, the titular character of Dawn’s unfinished film — a cartoon superhero who emerged from her journals during years shaped by a misdiagnosis and the misguided belief that she could wrestle her way out of severe depression through grit, dark humor, and willpower alone. Bipolar Girl inhabits an era of Dawn’s life where masking and survival made consistent forward progress in her creative life exceedingly difficult. Now, a different model of growth emerges — one rooted in reworking old neural pathways, nervous-system repair. Dawn learns how to show up imperfectly, stay connected to the people she loves, and keep moving. As Dawn reconnects with people she interviewed years earlier, Sport of Failure becomes both a personal reckoning and a living archive — a film about making art from the mess of memory and building a life worth living after the story you thought would save you falls apart.

Substack: https://substack.com/@dawnkdreyer

Director | Dawn Dreyer
Website | Bipolargirldoc.com
Instagram | Instagram.com/bipolargirldoc