EBULLIENT
directed by Autie Carlisle
Ebullient is a short documentary about a broken bull-rider from West Texas who must find sobriety to save himself and his son.
trailer
Ebullient / from the Latin ‘ebullire,’ to boil over
The only thing Ross Edmonds wanted to do was ride bulls,
even after he broke his neck twice. Trying to cope with life the way his mother taught him, through drinking and drugs, he nearly killed himself.
After his son was taken away from him he knew he had to find another way of living.
A story of perseverance and stubbornness. Ross never gives up; not as a kid and not as he fights for his own kid.
Director Statement
Ross Edmonds was difficult to be friends with. I met Ross, the cowboy and main character in this documentary, while in an overly-trendy town in West Texas in 2014. I thought he was just styled like an eccentric cowboy, clicking along in his silver spurs, but I was wrong, he is a real cowboy. One who has broken his neck twice riding bulls. But his drunkenness was also real and was not something I wanted to highlight or be around. I never felt like he could tell me his story because it was something he couldn't quite tell himself.
I was visiting Texas again in 2019 and found out that Ross was sober. He had taken up surfing on the west coast of Ireland when retracing his Irish and Native American heritage. I found out that he had a son, and that he was someone who now wanted to own his own story. He still had his broken past, but he was trying to rebuild his life. Learning to be a father and learning to deal with loss and pain instead of running from it. And that felt like something worth telling.