In the middle of the night, I had a crushing headache that took over my entire body and mind. My brain had forgotten how to filter sensory inputs, images as well as noises. Lotje Sodderlands documentary about her recovery, made with director Sophie Robinson, is now showing at festivals; go to mybeautifulbrokenbrain.com for more information. I began to use Siri on my iPhone, to listen to what I was writing, and it felt great. The surgeon who had removed the blood clot and parts of my brain told me that I had almost total right homonymous hemianopsia avisual field loss (I have no peripheral vision on my right-hand side) and severe aphasia, a communication disorder affecting comprehension and expression. films; about; bla-bla; The Infinit Magic of Having Less. David Lynch plays an interesting role in this narrative. n the short term, I had to re-learn many words and struggled to put them in the right order. Yet, she also shares her perspective as a patientduring this process: The experience of being defined by what you can no longer do or how you are limited becomes devastating. "We started filming that day and she was still very confused and there was a big part of me that was wary because I knew she was very vulnerable and had to concentrate on recovery. I encourage patients to find creative or unique outlets to express themselves and understand their emotions in non-traditional ways other than writing and reading. JOIN NOW Executive producer David Lynch played a pivotal role in Lotje Sodderland's recovery, as explained in this documentary. And had I actually gone mad? There hasn't been a huge amount of buzz around it but it's early days, and Mark Rylance is an interesting casting for the titular Big Friendly Giant, There's a lot of expectation on director Damien Chazelle's shoulders following the success of Whiplash, one of the smallest films ever to have been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. I would record messages for friends, and they would record messages and send them back to me. He really helped us massively. In mid-January, I was admitted to the rehabilitation unit at Homerton hospital for a three-month period. Thedrugs numbed my brain, but I was paranoid and panicked. Read on for more from my conversation with the filmmakers, about their collaboration, how they got David Lynch on board, and what Sodderlands life looks like these days. Lotje is asked to read words from a screen while the TMS is stimulating regions of her brain throughher skull in the hope that the brain would be able to find new pathways between her visual and language areas. I had to figure out for myself that I was never going to be the same as before and find out how can I work with the new me and see the beauty and positivity in my new limitations., Keeping love fun even when illness strikes, Lotje Sodderland on finding her limit-less possibilities after acquiring aphasia. This prompts her to enroll in an experimental therapy that uses Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) a non-invasive methodto stimulate a small part of the brain through magnetically induced electric currents. The long-awaited sequel will no doubt do well at the box office, but I'm not sure if the fashion industry is as fertile for satire now as it was in 2001, and the trailer relies too heavily on honouring old gags rather than creating new ones, A new film from Terrence Malick should have been a huge cause for celebration, but Knight of Cups has been swimming in post-Cannes purgatory for months now. At age 34, film director Lotje Sodderland was struck by an intracerebral haemorrhagic stroke after a night out with her friends. An acquired language impairment, aphasia typically occurs after a stroke or traumatic brain injury and can affect a persons ability to communicate, both verbal or written. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, When Lotje Sodderland woke up in hospital following a stroke, she charted her recovery by making videos on her iPhone. I would spend every day for a month at the Institute of Neurology in Queen Square in London, where live electrodes would be strapped to my head, zapping my neurones into submission. Filming what was happening to me was fundamental to my recovery. I knew who I was, and I recognised my mother and brother -but I didnt know anything else. I didnt want the experience to pass through me. As part of her recovery she designed a motivational psychological programme and she has now developed the app "Recovery After a Brain Injury" to help people faced with similar challenges. Sophie, when Lotje got in touch, what did you think?SOPHIE ROBINSON: I was in the middle of an edit of another film. Lotje describes herself as hard-working, a traveler, someone who has lots of friends, someone who loves to read. I later asked him what it was like. Two weeks after the stroke, I nearly burned the ward to a cinder when the hospital ran a standard independent living test on me (the making of tea and toast). Directors Sophie Robinson Lotje Sodderland (co-director) Writer Sophie Robinson (uncredited) Stars David Lynch Sophie Robinson Hente Sodderland See production, box office & company info Watch on Netflix International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, "SXSW Film Review: My Beautiful Broken Brain", "My Beautiful Broken Brain: The amazing collaboration of David Lynch and a woman who 'video-selfied' her stroke", "My Beautiful Broken Brain review - moving study of life after stroke", "At SXSW, a Woman Who Had a Stroke Turns Director", "Netflix Picks Up 'My Beautiful Broken Brain' Documentary from David Lynch", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=My_Beautiful_Broken_Brain&oldid=1098836516, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 July 2022, at 18:34. But I said nothing, swimming through torrents of wordless creosote, fearing my speech would be unintelligible. Faced with the prospect of growing old and dying alone, he eventually decides to wake up a second passenger', Is nothing sacred? My friends who lived overseas, especially Lucy and Anita, who lives in Holland, visited regularly. Her experience of long-term recovery is all the more poignant in light of a damning new report from the Stroke Association - published to coincide withStroke Awareness month- which says thousandsof victims are abandoned after their initial treatment,and don't receive the support they so desperately need. Sky High: The Series I went to see some fireworks with friends in the evening, followed by a trip to the pub, and returned to my flat at around 10pm. I had spent the weekend with friends, watching fireworks over London, and trying to make impossible things happen for a deadline at work, where I was a documentary producer. Through extensive in-patient and out-patient rehabilitation that included occupational therapy, speech therapy, visits with both a psychologist and psychiatrist, she makes a profound recovery, despite the post-seizure regression she experienced following the experimental transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatments. A sketch of the monsters she saw in visions and dreams. What does that make me? It is very difficult to be other peoples property. Itried the radio, but the sounds were overwhelming. I woke to the sound of nurses by my bed, discussing their Christmas plans. But at the end of the program, she still cant read. Now the resulting documentary - produced by David Lynch - is coming to . Elf and Iron Man director Jon Favreau is a fairly safe pair of hands though, and Idris Elba, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong'o, Christopher Walken, Giancarlo Esposito and Bill Murray are all on board, 'Financial TV personality Lee Gates, who offers up stock advice on his hit show "Money Monster," is held hostage by a viewer, Kyle Budwell, who lost all of his money following a bad tip from Lee during his show'. With a black hood pulled up to hide her surgery scar, she haltingly says, Okay, Im alive, then smiles and gives the camera a thumbs-up. First I would need to get some money. But at this stage the doctors couldnt tell me why Ihad lost the ability to speak, read, write or think coherently. As a result, a single passenger is awakened 60 years early. And it still is. We just didnt know how to. I began to draw, bringing to life the monsters I had seen in visions and dreams. We see her brightenwhen she triumphantly comes up withthe word nephew pointing to a picture of her youngniece. Mrs Tan said: Right now, a year on, my language skill is like a primary three student. They looked at me with sad eyes; I wished I could say something to assuage their sadness. Another change is that Ican access the creative part of my brain more easily. Dutch-French filmmaker Lotje Sodderland didn't know young people could suffer from a stroke - until she had one herself in 2011, then aged 34. But no more than the average Lynch fan. When Mrs Tan regained consciousness, Mr Tan also had to manage his wifes agitation towards her weakened condition and new disability called aphasia. He laughed and said, Well, Im happy youre still here.. Like many of the UK's 1.2 million stroke survivors, Sodderland spent months trying to relearn how to navigate this new world, where thoughts followed no structure and words lost their meaning. I definitely never thought I would actually send those messages to him, especially early on. Things change constantly for everybody. We spent many frustrating afternoons trying. "I went to meet her the day after she got out of hospital," says Robinson. As I was filming that first interview, I remember the hairs on my arms sticking on ends, thinking theres something really extraordinary about this woman and everything thats happening. But it was decided that this experiment could no longer be run on people who had suffered a stroke within the past year. When film-maker Lotje Sodderland had a severe stroke, she lost the ability to speak, read, write or think coherently. I regained my speaking skills and used the film making process as a central tool to figure out who I was through images and sounds. My brother describes the old me as extremely dynamic, extremely social, very impassioned. I started to have dark, repetitive thoughts like I was not getting better, not able to get a job or be independent.The classes were also useful for calming the mind as after a brain injury, it is so hard to switch off the negative thoughts to rest or sleep. I didnt sleep for days. I never had any limits: travelling widelyand generally being very active. All the essentials: top fashion stories, editors picks, and celebrity style. I had no strategy to survive any catastrophes of the heart was it utterly unwise to expose myself to such potential loss? In just a few hours, Mr Tan took on the responsibility of a caregiver giving permission for his wifes brain operation to proceed and watching over her as she went into an induced coma for almost 10 days. One night, Lotje goes out to watch fireworks in London, her hometown, and at the end of the evening, she goes home and . But after a few months, the intense regime soon got taxing on the couple. WIRED LIVE. She woke up in her east London flat with a blinding headache and. I woke to hear a voice debating the benefits andpitfalls of dipping a ginger nut biscuit in tea,and knew I must be in hospital again. The fog was lifting. I gazed at the night sky and remembered my old life of freedom and adventure. It didnt, she says, After her stroke Lotje Sodderland tried electronic pulses to fire up parts of the brain responsible for reading. Her brother is also joyful: She is alive! She acknowledges that therapists need to assess a person and define what the patients deficits are in order to conduct a proper therapy and figure out how to improve the persons capabilities. But underneath the hoodie is a blood-caked scar from brain surgery. Iyearned for solitude. I moved into my own place, and vowed never to see another therapist again. Lotje, theres a turning point in the film, when you decide to stop seeing yourself as limited and instead start focusing on the possibilities. He shared: Im thankful for my friends for stepping in even my friend in Iran offered positive messages to my wife. I would then spend a further 140 minutes a day on the laptops visual and sonic word repetition training app. On one hand, it's landed a cast of incredibly funny actresses, but on the other, another reboot? I was really moved. One morning, I put the Biro to an empty sheet of paper, and with asudden momentum, my hand began to write the words that Lucy, who is Australian, had dictated: Throw the bloody boomerang back, mate. A phrase! Currently working with Film4, Lotje is in development on her first feature. Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. At Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Mr Tan was further dismayed to learn that his wifes condition was diagnosed as a drug overdose and possible suicide attempt. There is no silence more resounding than that of a cognitive communication malfunction. My Beautiful Broken Brain combines her many iPhone recordingscapturing her experience became an obsession in the face of faulty short-term memoryinterviews shot by the documentarian Sophie Robinson beginning just weeks after the hemorrhage, and special effects footage that re-creates the terrifying fever-dream experience of being inside Sodderlands malfunctioning brain, a world she compares to the Red Room in David Lynchs Twin Peaks. Mr Tan quit his job and poured his heart into finding the best care for his partner by doing his own research and seeking the advice of family and healthcare professionals. I couldn't speak at first, or read, and my thoughts were not linear or logical. Before the stroke, I think my friends found my cynical sense ofhumour entertaining. He said, Do you remember me? Lotje Sodderland is a director and writer, known for My Beautiful Broken Brain (2014), Limbo (2021) and Can You Rebuild My Brain? Really? Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. Watch trailers & learn more. It was a big moment of acceptance. But there is real value in my new life: its much more meaningful and focused, and that includes my relationships. 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 My life is now split into two: before the stroke, and after. A house cleaner desperately searches for her husband as a dreaded criminal syndicate dredges up past tragedies and ultimately drives her to violence. The National Aphasia Association is 501 (c)(3), Words are more like Cats than Dogs: A Commentary on Aphasia, Affiliate Highlight: Aphasia Group of Middle Tennessee. I didnt know it yet, but I was experiencing anunprovoked bleed to my brain a stroke. Looking back it was actuallyvery liberating -to have no ego, no past or future, no understanding of a lost, logical life. But this is a good opportunity to figure out who your real friends are and let them go. Among the faculties Ihadlost was the ability to understand narrative. : Directed by Stephen Finnigan. The film was initiated by its protagonist herself. I was put on a waiting list and while I waited, received what the NHS calls therapy at home. Now the resulting documentary produced by David Lynch is coming to Netflix, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. A year has passed and Lotje is at a Cognitive Communication conference, speaking to anaudience of therapists, sharing with them her experience. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Lotje Sodderland By making videos and telling the story of his stroke, David found that he was able to visualise the physiological progress he had made and still needed to make. The first ability I regained was speech. Mr Tan shared: We started going for Chit Chat Cafe in May and got connected with more people for extra support It was fortunate as around this time, I got into a road accident and broke three bones in my foot. It later turned out that my stroke had been caused by a rare developmental malformation of blood vessels in my brain: something like this could have happened at any time. Lotje Sodderland is known for My Beautiful Broken Brain (2014), Limbo (2021) and Can You Rebuild My Brain? HAPPINESS INITIATIVE SINGAPORE. I looked around and saw patients in various states of disablement: some were comatose, some were talking to themselves; one, a GuillainBarr syndrome survivor, lay in bed reading. "It was amazing, it was all in capital letters with lots of dots," remembers Robinson. 17 Oscar-Nominated Netflix Films to Watch in Honor of Awards Season, The Best (and Most Anticipated) Movies of 2023 So Far, The 70 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time. But can he make it entertaining the way The Big Short did with the financial crisis? The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. Lotje: When I fell ill, it was a huge shock to everybody as it was such a radical and massive transformation overnight. Objects would appear, shift and disappear Icouldnt help but wonder if the world was playing an almighty trick on me. We sent that link through his agent, and other means of contact. When he agreed to put his name to it, he insisted that Lotje and I share the executive producer credit with him. Sophie Robinson Lotje Sodderland Mere som dette Kommer snart Tonight You're Sleeping with Me Stuck in a passionless marriage, a journalist must choose between her distant but loving husband and a younger ex-boyfriend who has reentered her life. Her vision is also troubling her she sees intense colors. I used it to record what was going on in my new world. "But I knew that I'd need some help.". I was just really reminded of his work. Q: Can you share any practices or therapies that you found useful in your recovery? Once a teenage Twin Peaks fan, Sodderland started making small video diaries for the director for fun, not thinking that he'd ever see them. My Beautiful Broken Brain aired on Netflix on March 18, 2016. Lotje Sodderland is an award winning writer and filmmaker, who started her career as a documentarian at the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) and advertising agency Mother in London. Tom Hanks is your guy. The therapy isnt easy, it seems to her that it will take forever to improve. I could now write quite fluently, but I still could not read. I'm not able to work to the same level, and multi-task,as I did before. I earn a living that way, but I no longer read and write. Ive worked on a new character, becoming more patient, more accepting, kinder to myself and to the people around me. Videos It is run by a team of dedicated speech therapist volunteers. What does your life look like now?LS: My life is really good now. And then we stayed in touch. But Lotje, as you can hear on the phone and see in the film, is massively articulate and knows exactly what she wants. ; the Infinit Magic of Having Less to expose myself to such potential loss friends who lived overseas especially! 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