Which 2007 biographical film about Jean-Dominique Bauby was directed by Julian Schnabel?

The 2007 biographical film about Jean-Dominique Bauby directed by Julian Schnabel is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The film adapts Bauby’s 1997 memoir about living with locked-in syndrome after a massive stroke and stars Mathieu Amalric as Bauby.

Bauby was the editor-in-chief of the French edition of Elle. After waking from a coma, he was almost completely paralyzed but remained mentally alert, with movement largely limited to his left eye. A speech therapist helped him communicate by blinking to select letters, allowing him to dictate his memoir one character at a time.

Schnabel makes the audience experience Bauby’s restricted perspective through subjective camera work, especially early in the film. The “diving bell” represents his imprisoned body, while the “butterfly” evokes his active imagination and inner freedom. The film is sometimes confused with The Sea Inside, another disability-focused biographical drama, but that 2004 film tells the story of Spanish activist Ramón Sampedro.