Coming to Netflix tomorrow, Friday, March 18: MY BEAUTIFUL BROKEN BRAIN
Sophie Robinson and Lotje Sodderland’s candid look at the unexpected aftermath of a stroke had its world premiere at IDFA in 2014. The doc went on to screen at Sheffield, ZagrebDox, and at this year’s SXSW.
A deeply personal story, the stroke victim here is Sodderland herself. After she suffered an intracranial hemorrhage, the 34-year-old went missing, alarming her friends and family who finally tracked her down at a London hospital. While they are relieved that Sodderland has survived, they soon learn she has lost fundamental language capabilities making it difficult to express herself. She turned to filmmaker Robinson to help document her long recovery, as she tries to relearn to read and write despite the aphasia the stroke has left her with, and joins an experimental study to stimulate her brain in the hopes of creating neural pathways. All the while, Sodderland contends with strange, altered vision that lends a distinct, experiential visual texture to the film, and unexpected side-effects from her treatment. As she attempts to make sense of her new reality, this prompts a fascinating consideration of her very sense of self in the absence of memories or the kinds of communication that she relied on before the stroke, ultimately leading to a hopeful new approach to life.
what (not) to doc 