Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

In this strong debut, Olympian Pappas shares her inspiring life story of overcoming tragedy as a child to enjoy a flourishing, multifaceted career as an athlete, filmmaker, and actor. Pappas, whose bipolar mother died by suicide when Pappas was five, grew up in Northern California with a loving father, older brother, and a stream of nannies. In middle school, she began measuring her accomplishments by how much discomfort she could endure while running races (“Every race hurts, no matter what. If anybody tells you otherwise they’re either lying or they simply don’t try hard enough”). This athletic ambition led to a scholarship at Dartmouth College and eventual acceptance into the 2016 Olympics as a long-distance runner. Her experience as an athlete, in turn, inspired her to collaborate on her first film, 2012’s [em]Tall as the Baobob Tree [/em], followed by two more films, Tracktown in 2016 and Olympic Dreams in 2019. Along the way Pappas developed fresh ways of thinking about and viewing the world, and coined the neologism bravey as “a self-identifier for those who are willing to chase their dreams” while always being kind to themselves and never letting other people’s opinions define them. Pappas’s extraordinary tale is skillfully told and profoundly inspiring. (Jan.)