Famous painter turned famous filmmaker Julian Schnabel copped the Best Director prize at Cannes for this alternately biting and sweet adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s famous memoir about what it means to go from a fully functioning human being to a man immobilized by “locked-in syndrome,” the result of a stroke. Mathieu Amalric (surely the hardest working young-ish actor in the French film industry) essays Bauby, first seen waking in a hospital room and realizing he can neither move nor speak...

"It's impossible to read even a sentence of [Jean-Dominique] Bauby's miraculous memoir--published in 1997, three days before the former Elle editor-in-chief died at 45--without an awareness of the monumental exertions it must have taken him to write it. Painstakingly dictated, one letter and one blink at a time (his eyelid being the only muscle he could control), it's the work of a fantastically keen and witty mind, trapped in a vegetative state... Even when portraying the lower depths of human suffering, artist-turned-filmmaker Schnabel paints a pretty picture... The titular symbols of oppression and freedom are both literalized, as is an extended hallucination of the Empress Eugenie. 'I cultivate the art of simmering memories,' Bauby writes, and the book is crammed with intimate reveries and recollections that Schnabel all but lunges at in his eagerness to craft a surreally creative essay on the human condition. In that respect, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly fits snugly alongside 1996's Basquiat and 2000's Before Night Falls in Schnabel's gallery of tortured, misunderstood artists."--Variety

The VIFF gratefully acknowledges the support of the Consulate General for France in Vancouver for their help in presenting the Spotlight on France series and for their invaluable assistance in facilitating the participation of French filmmakers at the Festival.