My Beautiful Broken Brain

My Beautiful Broken Brain is a 2014 documentary film about the life of 34-year-old Lotje Sodderland after she suffered a hemorrhagic stroke as a result of a congenital vascular malformation in November 2011, initially experiencing aphasia, the complete loss of her ability to read, write, or speak coherently.

[3] The film starts with a recap of the intracerebral hemorrhage (stroke) and subsequent emergency brain surgery on her parietal and temporal lobes, and follows the life of its protagonist, London resident Lotje Sodderland, in the year that followed, documenting the progress of her recovery and the major setbacks she experienced.

[4][5] Lotje covers some of the daily challenges that she experienced after sustaining injury to her brain through the stroke, not just with dysphasia and apraxia while communicating through expressive verbal language, reading and writing, but also the memory deficits, confusion, cognitive processing and sensory perception changes, over-sensitivity to noise and the sensations of overwhelm, fatigue, frustration, and at times discouragement about future considering the changes in her life.

This together with various sequences showing the world from her point-of-view at that time, including for example visual misperceptions (hallucinations), produce a rather personal storytelling style.

[7] My Beautiful Broken Brain had its world premiere at the 2014 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, where it won the DOC U award.