PHENOMENA on worldwide release
PHENOMENA. A psychedelic odyssey into the fabric of the universe.
Some days, a film idea is so good, you just have to help get it realised.
In 2021, I was a judge at two international documentary festivals, where the same short web films kept leaping out at me: Look at this! Smart, beautiful, original and masterful in execution, Phenomena (ABC Online) was created by young filmmaker Josef Gatti and producer Rob Innes.
I reached out to Josef and discovered, to my surprise, that he lived in the same city. We began chatting about his photographic, experimental and music-video work, and his ambition to move into long-form documentary. His dream was to turn Phenomena into a feature-length science documentary for global cinema release. No small dream for a first-time documentary filmmaker.
And so began several years of conversations, collaboration and a shared belief that the dream could become real.
Thanks to VicScreen, Josef joined Genepool on a part-time placement, understudying director Emma Watts on Last Chance to Save Life. He brought his wicked-smart ideas to the challenge of creating images of phages, while we explored how to shape, craft and build a feature science documentary — and, of course, how to fund it.
Josef and Rob ran with some of the funding suggestions, securing production partners and a budget big enough to match the film’s ambition and scale. I came on board as Script Consultant and pre-production began in earnest.
Fast-forward to 2026. Josef’s dream has come true. Phenomenon is now screening at major festivals around the world, including True/False, CPH:DOX, AFO, Sheffield DocFest, Melbourne International Film Festival and Sydney Film Festival, winning awards and filling cinemas with young audiences captivated by Josef’s extraordinary in-camera images and his unique vision of how the world works.
Congratulations to Josef, Rob and the entire team. I’m so pleased to see this shiny, ambitious and unconventional idea become a reality.
Please do try to see Phenomena.
Sonya Pemberton, Creative Director Genepool Productions