The Boy and the Butterfly

“Where does the brain end and the mind begin?”

Charlie was fourteen when he went off a jump he had landed a hundred times and did not get up. Days in a coma, a diffuse axonal injury, and a boy who woke unable to walk or recognize his own family.

Albert has spent his life telling stories. When he lost his leg in 2016, working out how to tell his own was how he imagined a way back into being. So when Charlie woke up wiped clean, he asked whether Charlie wanted to try the same thing. Charlie said yes, and the telling turned out to be part of how he got better.

Nothing here was staged or put back together afterwards. Johnny Harrington moved into the house to help with the year, and filmed while he helped. The story was being made at the same time Charlie was.

What comes out is a father and son at very close range, inside the six months a young brain rebuilds faster than it ever will again. It is also a surprisingly fun adventure of becoming, run from the very edge of life and death.

Charlie is fifteen now and the film is carried in his voice. He asked for it to be made so that other people would have something to hold onto. A brain injury is usually invisible, and it is usually carried alone.