A Story About You: Denise Yolén on Love, Vulnerability, Faith, and the Conversations We Keep Avoiding
There is a certain kind of story that does not ask for your attention. It simply takes it.
You sit down, the lights shift, and somewhere between the first scene and the last, you recognize something you were not expecting to see. Yourself.
That was my experience watching A Story About You during its Atlanta premiere at the BronzeLens Film Festival.
Written, produced by, and starring Denise Yolén, A Story About You is not interested in presenting audiences with a picture-perfect version of love. Instead, it looks directly at the complicated spaces where intimacy, communication, vulnerability, expectations, and our individual histories collide. Perhaps that is why its title feels so appropriate. Because somewhere inside this film, there really is a story about you.
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE STORY
Before Denise Yolén became a writer, producer, and actress, there was a young girl discovering what it felt like to tell a story in front of an audience.
Born in New York and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Denise initially imagined a very different future for herself. Psychology interested her because she wanted to understand people—what they felt, why they behaved the way they did, and what existed beneath the surface.
Then came fifth grade. Denise was cast as Rizzo in a school production of Grease, and something changed. There was an immediacy to theater that fascinated her: standing in front of people and experiencing their reactions in real time. She began to understand that storytelling could do more than entertain. It could reach someone emotionally. It could make people recognize something within themselves.
That discovery eventually led Denise to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she developed her craft and began building the foundation for the storyteller she would become. The psychology she once considered pursuing never entirely disappeared.
In many ways, it simply found another home.
Today, Denise's work continues to examine people from the inside out, particularly the complicated emotional terrain of love, intimacy, relationships, and human connection.
FROM SUNDAYS IN JULY TO A STORY ABOUT YOU
A Story About You is part of a larger creative journey. Denise wrote, produced, and starred in her first feature film, Sundays in July, a relationship-centered story featuring Monika and Trent. The film earned Outstanding Feature at the 2021 Micheaux Film Festival, where Denise also received Best Actress. But she was not finished exploring these characters—or the questions surrounding them.
A Story About You continues that exploration as the second feature in what Denise has envisioned as a trilogy.
Set in Brooklyn, the film examines what happens when relationships move beyond attraction and enter the much more difficult territory of truly knowing another person.
What do we expect from our partners?
Where did those expectations come from?
What happens when traditional ideas about masculinity, femininity, providing, protecting, vulnerability, and partnership no longer fit neatly into modern relationships?
And perhaps most importantly: Do we actually know how to talk to each other anymore?
Denise raises an interesting point when discussing how relationships have evolved. For generations, many men were expected to demonstrate their value through tangible acts of building and providing—creating homes, offering physical security, and establishing structure.
As society changed, so did many of those traditional roles. But our emotional expectations did not necessarily evolve at the same speed. That leaves many couples attempting to build modern relationships using blueprints inherited from entirely different generations.
A Story About You lives inside that tension.
It asks what happens when the old language no longer works, but we have not yet learned a new one.
MEN, VULNERABILITY, AND THE POWER OF LISTENING
One of the film's most compelling qualities is its willingness to show men being emotionally vulnerable without treating vulnerability as weakness. There is no need for explosive confrontation to make the emotions significant. Instead, the film creates room for something that can be even more uncomfortable: Honesty. Two people sitting across from one another.
Listening. Speaking. Trying to understand instead of simply preparing their next defense.
That may sound simple, but anyone who has ever loved another person knows it is not.
Technology has given us extraordinary ways to stay connected, but it has also given us countless ways to avoid genuine connection. We can text instead of talk. Leave messages unread. Hide behind screens. Rewrite our responses before sending them. Face-to-face honesty does not offer the same protection. And A Story About You strips some of that protection away.
What remains are people confronting the real-life experiences they carry into relationships—childhood wounds, expectations, disappointments, fear, pride, love, and everything they have learned about what partnership is supposed to look like. This is not simply a film about one relationship. It is about the emotional baggage all of us bring into the relationships we choose.
A FILM FINDING ITS AUDIENCE
Before arriving in Atlanta, A Story About You had already begun making its way through the festival circuit.
The film premiered at the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival and later screened at the American Black Film Festival and Essence Festival of Culture before making its Atlanta premiere at the BronzeLens Film Festival.
For Denise, however, one of the most meaningful measures of the film's impact may not come from a festival program, award, or screening schedule. It comes from people.
Following the BronzeLens screening, a young woman approached Denise and shared that she was experiencing difficulties in her own relationship. She had recognized herself in the film. She needed encouragement. And Denise gave it to her.
She reminded the woman that she was beautiful, creative, important, and deeply connected to her own emotions. It may have appeared to be a small exchange amid the movement of a busy film festival, but it represented something much larger. The art had reached someone.
FAITH BEHIND THE CREATIVE PROCESS
There are many titles attached to Denise Yolén: writer, producer, actress, and storyteller.
But when you speak with her about what grounds her, another word emerges quickly:
Prayerful.
Denise gives the glory to God and speaks about faith not as something separate from her creative life, but as part of its foundation.
The entertainment industry can demand constant reinvention. There are scripts, auditions, financing, production schedules, festivals, rejection, applause, and long stretches when an artist simply has to continue believing in something no one else can see yet.
For Denise, faith provides an anchor through all of it.
It is where confidence meets surrender.
And it is where the artist remembers that the work is bigger than the moment.
LOVE ALSO LIVES IN THE KITCHEN
Outside of film, Denise's understanding of love can be found somewhere else:
In the kitchen.
“Cooking is an expression of love.”
For Denise, food carries memory.
Her grandmother cooked with love, and that tradition became an inheritance—a connection between generations experienced through taste, preparation, and the simple act of feeding someone you care about.
Her own favorites often come from the sea: shrimp, salmon, and whole roasted red snapper.
With Filipino and Haitian roots woven into her family history, food also connects Denise to culture, diaspora, and identity.
And when asked about a favorite cuisine?
Puerto Rican food earns the answer.
There is something fitting about discovering that a storyteller so interested in human connection also finds meaning around a table.
WHAT SHE WANTS BLACK WOMEN TO KNOW
For Black women considering careers in film, television, theater, or any creative field, Denise's message is rooted less in warning and more in possibility.
Skin color should never determine the boundaries of what someone believes they are capable of creating.
Color exists everywhere—across food, language, countries, and cultures—and that diversity is part of what makes the world beautiful.
Denise's understanding of culture was also shaped by travel. During her senior year, she traveled to Ghana and witnessed theater being used as a vehicle for social change.
It reinforced something that continues to influence her work today: an artist should remain willing to learn just as deeply as they hope to teach.
Travel becomes education.
Culture becomes education.
Listening becomes education.
And storytelling becomes another way of connecting people who may initially believe they have very little in common.
Her philosophy ultimately returns to something remarkably simple:
“We are here to love one another.”
FOR THE WRITER WHO HASN'T STARTED YET
Ask Denise what she would tell someone trying to bring their own story into the world, and she does not offer a shortcut.
She offers discipline.
First, understand your process.
Denise needs solitude to create. Another writer may need workshops, collaborators, or the energy of a crowded room.
Neither method is automatically right.
The important thing is discovering what allows you to create honestly.
Then comes the part that cannot be avoided:
Write.
Denise practices morning pages—putting pen to paper and allowing herself to write before the rest of the day begins competing for her attention.
Do not immediately judge what appears on the page.
Do not stop because the first paragraph is imperfect.
Give yourself three pages.
Write through uncertainty.
Write through silence.
Write through the voice telling you that nothing worthwhile is coming.
Because eventually, it does.
The words will come.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE CAMERA
Although Denise's voice is at the center of A Story About You, filmmaking is inherently collaborative.
The film was directed by Joseph E. Austin II, whose direction helps translate Denise's exploration of intimacy and relationships from the written page into a cinematic experience.
Behind the camera, cinematographer Jeremy Harris helps establish the visual language through which those conversations unfold.
Together with Denise and the larger production team, they created a film that allows emotional moments room to exist without overwhelming them.
For a story so dependent on what people say—and sometimes what they cannot say—that restraint matters.
A STORY THAT KEEPS TRAVELING
Denise Yolén stepped into Rizzo's jacket in fifth grade and discovered the power of an audience responding to a story.
Years later, she is no longer simply standing inside someone else's story.
She is writing her own.
Producing it.
Performing it.
And creating space for audiences to find themselves inside it.
From Sundays in July to A Story About You, Denise has continued asking questions about love, intimacy, and the complicated ways human beings attempt to connect.
At Slamdance, the film began its festival journey. At the American Black Film Festival and Essence Festival of Culture, that journey continued. At BronzeLens, Atlanta had its opportunity to experience it.
And somewhere after that screening, a young woman walked up to Denise because something she had just watched felt familiar.
That moment tells you almost everything you need to know about why stories like this matter.
Maybe another couple will watch the film and drive home thinking about a conversation they have been avoiding.
Maybe someone will finally understand the person sitting beside them.
Maybe someone else will recognize a piece of themselves they have spent years refusing to confront.
That is the power of storytelling when it is willing to tell the truth.
And that is what Denise Yolén has created.
Not simply a story about Monika.
Not simply a story about Trent.
Not simply a story about relationships.
A Story About You.
And perhaps, somewhere inside it, a story about all of us.
ABOUT DENISE YOLÉN
Denise Yolén is a writer, producer, and actress whose work explores love, intimacy, relationships, and human connection.
A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, she wrote, produced, and starred in her first feature film, Sundays in July, which won Outstanding Feature at the 2021 Micheaux Film Festival, where Denise also received Best Actress.
Her second feature, A Story About You, is a Brooklyn-set love story and the second installment in a planned trilogy. The film premiered at the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival and continued its festival journey with screenings at the American Black Film Festival and Essence Festival of Culture before making its Atlanta premiere at the BronzeLens Film Festival.
Through her work, Denise creates stories that invite audiences to look more deeply at themselves—and at one another.
FILM CREDITS
A Story About You
Writer, Producer & Star
Denise Yolén
Director
Joseph E. Austin II
Cinematographer
Jeremy Harris
A Story About You continues its festival journey. Follow Denise Yolén for upcoming screenings, projects, and updates on the Sundays in July trilogy.
Denise Yolén
Founder · Producer
A Story About You
Los Angeles | New York
©️ 2025 A Story A
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