It's a common assumption that our memories work like a filing cabinet; that our brain captures moments as documents that we can pull up and view later until they're so old they disintegrate. But that isn't how our minds work at all. Memory is slippery. And when we experience traumatic events, our survival instincts overtake everything else. Yet it's the first way of thinking that shapes the expectations lumped onto survivors of sexual violence – how we should behave and remember events. It's a heavy burden to bear.

Shards of Her is the first piece of cinema I've seen that captures the relationship between trauma and memory so well. The strength of the drama is in its fragmented – and intentionally unreliable – storyline. Except for hints along the way, we as the audience can only accept the reality offered: the one that Lin Chen Xi experiences. We are disoriented and confused too. We are uneasy. We are pulled through Chen Xi's life like a knotted thread through cloth.

Unlike more black-and-white film depictions of survivor stories, Shards of Her moves beyond a victim/perpetrator binary. The drama explores the degrees of culpability resting with certain characters but without being didactic in its judgement. It's a nuanced approach I wish we saw more often.

While the strength of this drama is in its storyline and characters, I just want to note that there are some beautiful landscape shots in the scenes set in Chen Xi's hometown. Some of the music timing and choices were a bit of a let-down, however.

I highly recommend this drama but please proceed carefully. As a sexual violence survivor myself, there were a few moments that were alarmingly close to home for me. By that point in the storyline, I saw it coming, so it was fine. But please take care. All in all, a stunning series.