Locked In: Breaking the Silence is an intimate, personal and surprisingly life-affirming story with a rare illness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, at its heart.

Director Xavier Alford is finally confronting an illness he has been hiding from family, close friends and even himself. Locked In follows him trying to make sense of the mysterious illness that has taken over his life in the only way he knows how...by making a film about it. What is it like to get a diagnosis of an incredibly rare condition that turns your whole world upside down? No one can tell you why or how you got it, not even doctors. No one knows how to beat it and there is no cure.

To grasp what it means for his body, his career and his family, Xavier meets other people with the illness, each shining an unfiltered light on the disability caused by the disease. He’s confronted with the seriousness of the condition when some of the patients he meets are on the edge of life, ‘locked-in’ their own bodies, completely paralysed, unable to move a single muscle, while their brain remains unaffected.

In a time where much of the world is experiencing lockdown, Locked In offers with unflinching positivity a fresh perspective on coping mechanisms and the recovery from virus related diseases.

Event Details:

Screening of the documentary ahead of a Q&A with the team behind the programme at 7.30pm. Details of how to access the screening will be communicated to all attendees. 

Panel: 

Xavier Alford (Director), Colette Hodges (Editor) and Mandy Chang (Commissioning Editor at BBC Storyville),chaired by Lynn Barlow, Chair of the RTS WOE Centre