When Lotje Sodderland suffered a serious hemorrhagic stroke in 2011, she lost the ability to do basic tasks that so many others unknowingly take for granted. With My Beautiful Broken Brain, a genre-warping documentary set to premiere globally on Netflix on March 18, Sodderland details her life-affirming path to recovery with some truly inspiring results.
"I am thrilled to join Lotje and [co-director Sophie Robinson] in sharing My Beautiful Broken Brain with the world," executive producer David Lynch says. "The brain is truly fascinating and much in the way that our brains are able to achieve total coherence finding enlightenment and fulfillment, you will surely be moved and inspired by this journey of self-rediscovery."
Ahead of the film's North American premiere at the SXSW Film Festival next month, we spoke with Sodderland and Robinson about what inspired them to bring this powerful journey to celluloid and how Lynch's support helped their dream quickly and victoriously become a reality.
"I wanted to grab hold of this experience that seemed to be traveling through me like liquid and became obsessed with recording everything as I lost my short term memory," Sodderland says of what initially inspired her to start crafting her recovery into a movie. "I communicated with video messages as I couldn’t read or write. These recordings became a central currency for the film."
"I was so struck by Lotje’s strength of character in the face of something so huge," adds Robinson, who had only just met Sodderland a few months before she suffered the traumatic stroke. "I was completely bowled over by the fact that she had already started filming the experience and when we did our first interview on camera I was moved in a way that I never have been before when filming someone."
Lynch's championing of the project, which began with an emailed video message that both filmmakers assumed would simply go unseen, served as a thriving force behind the film's success. "[Lynch] seemed intrigued by my brain, by my broken language, and secret inner world," Sodderland reveals. "As well as his formidable creative brilliance he is an incredibly warm, kind and generous person."
My Beautiful Broken Brain makes its global Netflix debut on March 18.
