Yesterday, I had the pleasure of doing a post-screening Q&A with the film-makers of an amazing documentary called My Beautiful Broken Brain.
One of the many remarkable things about the documentary is that one of the film-makers is also the subject, as she began making the film a few days after her life-threatening brain injury.
The documentary follows Lotje Sodderland who experienced a major brain haemorrhage at the age of 34.
She started filming herself a few days afterwards on her iPhone, initially to make sense of her suddenly fragmented life, but soon contacted film-maker Sophie Robinson to get an external perspective.
It’s interesting both as a record of an emotional journey through recovery, but also because Lotje spent a lot of time working with a special effects designer to capture her altered experience of the world and make it available to the audience.
I also really recommend a long-form article Lotje wrote about her experience of brain injury for The Guardian.
It’s notable because it’s written so beautifully. But Lotje told me she while she had regained the ability to write and type after her injury, she has been left unable to read. So the whole article was written through a process of typing text and getting Siri on her iPhone to read it back to her.
The documentary is available on Netflix.
Link to My Beautiful Broken Brain on Wikipedia.
Link to full documentary on Netflix.
Link to long-form article in The Guardian.
Mind Hacks 