My Beautiful Broken Brain

At thirty-four, Lotje Sodderland had a brain haemorrhage caused by a congenital vascular malformation. She survived but lost the ability to read, write and speak coherently. In her hospital room she began filming herself on her phone, and that footage became the core of the film. The director Sophie Robinson stayed with her through the following year. The documentary does not present recovery as a straight line. Lotje's perception has changed: letters do not stay in place, light arrives differently, certain moments become overwhelming. Rather than describing this, the film tries to reproduce it in the image, and that attempt is both its strongest and its most contested aspect. At the centre of the narrative is an experimental neurostimulation treatment whose results do not go the expected way. David Lynch is among the film's executive producers. Who it's for: Viewers who like personal documentary, accounts of neurological experience, and films that play with form. Who it's not for: The visual effects are intense and some passages are uncomfortable to watch. The subject is illness and loss, directly.