The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
After a stroke leaves him paralysed and able only to blink one eye, a magazine editor dictates a memoir letter by letter.
Cannes Film Festival, Best Director, 2007
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of a Paris fashion magazine, suffers a massive stroke that leaves him with locked in syndrome, fully conscious but able to move only his left eyelid. With a therapist reciting the alphabet, he blinks out a whole book, letter by patient letter.
The film renders the persistence of imagination, memory, and desire inside a paralysed body, showing an inner life that stays vivid when the body has stopped. It is a moving text on embodiment, loss, and the mind's freedom. It won Best Director at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, and is based on the memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by Jean-Dominique Bauby.
Details
- 2007
- France
- French
- Film