Ripped is more than a film to me - it’s a love letter to my mom. Natalie is not just the subject of this documentary, she is the reason I understand resilience, vulnerability, and the power of reinvention. After nearly four decades of marriage, the loss of her own mother, and years of carrying the weight of others before herself, she found strength in the most unexpected place: a bodybuilding stage at 59 years old.

I wanted to make this film because I watched her fall apart - and then rebuild herself, rep by rep, day after day. What could have been the end of her story became the beginning of a new one. As her son, I had the rare privilege of capturing this transformation through a lens only I could bring: one that balances the raw honesty of her struggles with the quiet admiration of a child watching his mother rise.

Stylistically, I sought to keep the film grounded in a raw, candid, and intimate visual language - authentic and unpolished, yet gripping in tone. As we follow her final four weeks of training, inching closer to her first professional competition, the film takes on a tension and urgency that mirrors her inner transformation. My aspiration was to create something that feels both tender and firm, while still rooted in the truth of her lived reality.

At its core, Ripped is about more than bodybuilding. It’s about loss, identity, aging, confidence, and the courage it takes to rewrite your own story when the world tells you it’s too late. My hope is that audiences see in Natalie what I do: proof that even when life tears you apart, it’s never too late to come back stronger.