Film
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
A journalist wakes from a stroke almost entirely paralysed, able to move only one eyelid, and dictates a memoir letter by letter through blinks. Julian Schnabel shoots much of it from inside Bauby's skull, blurred and lurching, so you experience the trap before you understand the man. Formally daring, emotionally exact, and far less bleak than it sounds — this is for people who want cinema to do something a book can't.
If you liked this
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown1989
Daniel Day-Lewis, at his most ferocious, plays a man with cerebral palsy who learns to paint and write using the only limb he can control. Same defiant will, same refusal of pity.
But Day-Lewis's performance is so towering it can overshadow everyone and everything around it.

The Sea Inside2004no page yet
A Spanish quadriplegic fights for the right to die on his own terms after decades of paralysis. Javier Bardem is extraordinary, and the film sits with the same interior stillness this one does.
But It argues for euthanasia with real conviction, which some viewers will find moving and others will find one-sided.
Amour2012
Haneke's unflinching study of an elderly couple as illness dismantles one of them. Cold, precise, devastating — the closest thing to this film's clear-eyed tone rather than its warmth.
But Haneke offers no comfort whatsoever; this is one of the bleakest films ever to win the Palme d'Or.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Ikiru1952
Both films are about a man handed a death sentence who chooses, almost as an act of rebellion, to make something meaningful with what's left — Bauby writes a book, Kurosawa's clerk builds a playground.
Kurosawa's black-and-white masterpiece about a dying bureaucrat who has months left and finally decides what his life is for. No blinking eye, no camera trickery — just a man discovering urgency.
But It's over two hours, in Japanese, from 1952, and moves at a patient, old-fashioned pace by modern standards.

More like this (8)
The Theory of Everything2014
Eddie Redmayne's Stephen Hawking loses his body to motor neurone disease while his mind stays blazingly alive — the same central image, told with more romance and gloss.
But It smooths over the messier parts of Hawking's life for something closer to conventional biopic uplift.

Untouchable2011no page yet
French, funny, and built around an unlikely friendship between a quadriplegic aristocrat and his ex-con caretaker. If you want the same subject with warmth and jokes instead of interior dread, start here.
But Its breeziness about disability and class has drawn real criticism for being a bit too comfortable.
Breathe2017no page yet
Andrew Garfield plays a man paralysed by polio who, with his wife's help, builds a life and a movement for the disabled from inside an iron lung. True story, quietly stubborn hope.
But It's tasteful to a fault — a hard true story rendered almost entirely gentle.
The Sessions2012no page yet
John Hawkes plays a poet with polio who hires a sex surrogate, and the film treats desire and a paralysed body with unusual honesty and dry humour.
But The premise is frank about sex and disability in a way that some will find refreshing and others uncomfortable.
Still Alice2014
Julianne Moore's linguistics professor watches her own mind dissolve from early-onset Alzheimer's — another first-person account of losing control from the inside out.
But It's a fairly conventional prestige drama; nothing here matches the formal risk-taking of Bauby's story.

Wit2001
Emma Thompson, dying of ovarian cancer, addresses the camera directly and dissects her own death with the same scholarly wit she once brought to poetry. Small, stagey, quietly ferocious.
But Made for HBO, it's talky and theatrical rather than cinematic, and never lets you look away from the hospital bed.

Memento2000
Schnabel traps you inside a damaged consciousness with blur and fractured POV shots; Nolan does the same trick as a genre exercise, proving the technique works as thriller mechanics too.
A noir thriller told entirely from inside a man's broken short-term memory, scenes running backwards so you feel his disorientation rather than just watching it. A cousin in technique, not in tone.
But It's a puzzle-box thriller built for rewatching and untangling, not the quiet emotional experience this film offers.

Talk to Her2002
Both films ask what it means to communicate with — and love — someone locked inside an unresponsive body, but Almodóvar answers from outside the glass rather than inside it.
Almodóvar's strange, tender melodrama centres on a comatose woman and the man who visits her daily, talking as if she can hear every word. Warmer, weirder, and more perverse than you'd expect.
But It flirts with genuinely troubling ideas about consent and devotion that some viewers will find hard to sit with.

People
Cast
Mathieu AmalricJean-Dominique Bauby
Emmanuelle SeignerCéline Desmoulins
Marie-Josée CrozeHenriette Durand
Anne ConsignyClaude
Patrick ChesnaisDr. Lepage
Niels ArestrupRoussin- Olatz López GarmendiaMarie Lopez
Jean-Pierre CasselFather Lucien
Marina HandsJoséphine
Max von SydowPapinou
Isaach de BankoléLaurent
Emma de CaunesEmpress Eugenia
Directing
- Lucie WagnerAssistant Director Trainee
- Sébastien MarziniakAssistant Director Trainee
- Julian SchnabelDirector
- Stéphane GluckFirst Assistant Director
- Mathilde CavillanSecond Assistant Director
Writing
- Jean-Dominique BaubyBook
- Ronald HarwoodScreenplay
Production
- Anne-Claire LoridantAssistant Unit Manager
- Aurore Diot-CodsAssistant Unit Manager
- David ThoorisAssistant Unit Manager
- Deborah DoursAssistant Unit Manager
- Delphine BrunetAssistant Unit Manager
- Emilie Larribaut-GuingueneAssistant Unit Manager
- Jean-Patrick NourricierAssistant Unit Manager
- Julien LinièresAssistant Unit Manager
- Julien MinetAssistant Unit Manager
- Laurent PlatiauAssistant Unit Manager
- Logan LelièvreAssistant Unit Manager
- Mathieu DesouchesAssistant Unit Manager
- Maud HubertAssistant Unit Manager
- Octane D'HontAssistant Unit Manager
- Olgierd Hordierjuk-zaniewickiAssistant Unit Manager
- Olivier BallardAssistant Unit Manager
- Sebastien CossetAssistant Unit Manager
- Sébastien CouletAssistant Unit Manager
- Thierry LevequeAssistant Unit Manager
- Valéry BoutelièreAssistant Unit Manager
- Virginia BernardAssistant Unit Manager
- Xavier ChampagnacAssistant Unit Manager
- Léonard GlowinskiAssociate Producer
- Eric TraversBusiness Affairs Coordinator
- Gérard MoulévrierCasting
- Jérôme SacerdotCasting Assistant
- Rachel BergerCasting Assistant
- Sana El GhoulCasting Assistant
- Laurent SouletCasting Director
- Myriam RaufmannController
- Jim LemleyExecutive Producer
- Pierre GrunsteinExecutive Producer
- François-Xavier DecraeneLine Producer
- Jon KilikProducer
- Kathleen KennedyProducer
- Laurent OttProduction Designer
- Michel EricProduction Designer
- Emmanuel MathieuProduction Manager
- Gwenael CamuzardProduction Manager
- Olivier JacobProduction Manager
- Vincent LefeuvreProduction Manager
- Amélie DibonProduction Secretary
- Gwenael CamuzardUnit Manager
Recommended by
Doctor Strange, The Theory of Everything, The Elephant Man, Still Alice, My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, Wit, Notes on Blindness, The Fault in Our Stars, #Alive, Talk to Her, Autism in Love, The Mercy