** Director Jeff Unay will be participating in post-screening Q&As on Feb. 8, 9 & 10! **

When life hits him hard, Joe Carman punches back. Newly 40, Joe juggles long hours working in a boiler room, an ongoing custody battle, his wife’s chronic illness, and the demands of raising four girls. The one place he finds release is in the ring, where he competes in the bruising sport of mixed martial arts. Despite the promise he made to his family to stop fighting, Joe continues to train secretly, determined to prove that he can keep up with the new crop of younger, up-and-coming competitors. But as he contends with a series of increasingly worrying health scares, the question arises: how much is Joe willing to risk—his family, his marriage, maybe even his life—to keep fighting? A true-life tale of resilience that unfolds with all the drama of fiction, The Cage Fighter is a riveting look at the demons that drive a man to push himself to the limit.

“Thanks to the extraordinary access Joe and his family granted to Unay, the pain comes through seemingly unfiltered. The anguish is so raw and the sorrow so intense that the viewer feels like a voyeur.” – Soren Andersen, The Seattle Times

On Jan. 19, Cage Fighter director Jeff Unay hosted a talk over Communal Coffee. To learn more about future filmmaker meet-and-greets, check out upcoming editions of Communal Coffee here.