Everyone has a bra sTORy

For most of my life, I believed my inability to find a bra that fit was simply one of those frustrations I quietly had learned to live with. If nothing fit, I assumed my body was the problem.

When I was a teenager, my mother never took me to buy my first bra or talked to me about my changing body. At the time, I interpreted her silence as absence. Years later, I came to understand that she was carrying forward what had been passed down to her. She came from a family where women rarely spoke about their bodies. There was no shared language, no conversation. I was left to figure it out on my own.

Decades later, my younger sister and I found ourselves having a conversation we had somehow never had before. It seemed almost impossible that two sisters could share a lifetime without ever discussing something so ordinary—and so central to our daily lives. As our conversation expanded to include my teenage niece and women across generations, one thing became clear: almost everyone has a bra story.

That conversation became the beginning of ALL BOUND UP.

The film grew from a simple question into an exploration of belonging, body image, gender, and the stories we inherit—as well as the ones we choose to rewrite. What began as a search for a bra that fit became an exploration of the practical wisdom some women have long shared with one another—knowledge I never received.

I filmed participants in their homes because I wanted them to speak from places where they felt comfortable, seen, and in control of their own stories. Visually, I wanted the film to feel as layered as memory itself. Hand-painted animation, archival advertising, and intimate interviews weave together history, humor, and personal reflection, creating a space where personal experience and cultural history exist side by side.

When I began this project, I thought I was making a film about bras. I finished it realizing I had made a film about something else entirely: the extraordinary power of women sharing knowledge, questioning inherited assumptions, and helping one another feel less alone.

I can't change the conversation my mother and I never had. But I hope ALL BOUND UP encourages new conversations—ones that help future generations trust the wisdom of their own bodies instead of measuring themselves against impossible standards of beauty. By listening to one another rather than the relentless messages of advertising, culture, and an industry that profits from women's insecurities, I hope we can begin to rewrite the narrative. — Rian Brown