A Psychedelic Journey Through Physics

Read Time:5 Minute, 25 Second

MOVIE REVIEWS
Phenomena
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Genre: Documentary, Experimental, Science
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 26m
Director(s): Josef Gatti
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 True/False Film Festival, and Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (CPH:DOX)

RAVING REVIEW: A film about the universe should make you feel small. PHENOMENA understands that instinct, but what makes it fascinating is the way it chooses to get there. Instead of relying on CGI or traditional scientific exposition, filmmaker Josef Gatti builds the entire experience through physical experimentation, capturing real-world interactions directly through the camera. The result is often breathtaking, occasionally hypnotic, and sometimes frustratingly distant.

The premise is simple. Gatti and his father, a retired physics teacher, begin exploring natural phenomena through a series of experiments that translate invisible forces into visual form. Electricity, magnetism, vibration, light, and chemical reactions all become the raw material for the film’s imagery. Many of these sequences resemble something you might expect from a psychedelic art installation. Yet, the film repeatedly reminds viewers that every pattern, burst of color, and fluid motion comes from real physical processes captured.

That commitment to authenticity is one of the film’s most compelling qualities. PHENOMENA doesn’t fake its sense of wonder. The visuals emerge directly from carefully constructed experiments designed to reveal how energy behaves. The film moves through ten loosely structured chapters, beginning with more familiar concepts like light and gradually expanding toward increasingly abstract ideas.

When the film actively engages with those ideas, it becomes mesmerizing. Watching ferrofluids ripple across magnetic fields or crystalline structures forming under shifting conditions carries an undeniable sense of discovery. These moments feel like peeking behind the curtain of the universe, glimpsing the mechanisms that quietly shape reality at scales we rarely consider.

Gatti’s background as a cinematographer and experimental artist is evident in nearly every frame. Liquids swirl into fractal shapes. Metallic particles dance in response to unseen forces. Vibrations ripple across surfaces in symmetrical patterns that look almost architectural. These sequences feel less like traditional documentary footage and more like visual symphonies built from physics itself.

Sound plays an equally important role in sustaining that atmosphere. The film’s musical landscape blends existing compositions from composer Nils Frahm with an original electronic score by Rival Consoles. Together, they create a drifting, meditative soundscape that guides the viewer through each experiment. The music often fills the absence of natural sound, since many of the processes being filmed either occur silently or at frequencies humans cannot hear.

There are stretches where PHENOMENA becomes less of a documentary and more of an immersive sensory experience. The film’s connection to experimental cinema is obvious, drawing inspiration from works that prioritized audiovisual exploration over traditional storytelling. The narration occasionally steps in to explain the science behind the experiments, but those moments are inconsistent. Sometimes it simply lets the visuals wash over the screen without context. At times, the audience begins to understand not only what they are seeing but why it behaves the way it does. Those moments make the visual experimentation feel purposeful. Large portions of the film drift into extended montages in which ferrofluids, chemicals, and particles simply move across the frame for long stretches. The imagery remains beautiful, but the absence of additional insight can start to feel repetitive. Instead of building toward deeper understanding, these sequences sometimes feel like visual interludes that stretch beyond their narrative function.

That imbalance becomes particularly noticeable in the film’s middle sections. What begins as an exciting fusion of art and science gradually slips into something closer to a prolonged audiovisual meditation. Some viewers will likely find those passages calming or even transcendent. Others may feel that the film loses its momentum when it stops engaging directly with the scientific ideas it introduces. It’s difficult not to admire the ambition behind PHENOMENA. Gatti’s dedication to practical experimentation gives the film a sense of tactile authenticity that most science documentaries lack. The visuals aren’t simulations of reality. They are reality, captured through painstaking studio work that reveals hidden patterns in the physical world.

That effort reportedly required weeks of research and preparation for each experiment, with the filmmaker carefully constructing environments where natural processes could unfold on camera with minimal interference. The results justify the effort, even when the film occasionally lingers too long on the spectacle of those discoveries. At its best, PHENOMENA evokes the same sense of cosmic curiosity that has driven scientific inquiry for centuries. The film invites viewers to reconsider how ordinary forces like light and vibration shape the universe around them. It also reminds us that the most astonishing patterns in nature often emerge from interactions too small or too subtle for the human eye to perceive.

By the time the film concludes, PHENOMENA has delivered an undeniably memorable experience, even if it isn’t entirely consistent. The visuals are frequently stunning, the music enveloping, and the central concept genuinely exciting. Even with a few limitations, PHENOMENA remains an impressive debut feature from Josef Gatti. It demonstrates a filmmaker willing to experiment not only with scientific processes but with the language of documentary itself. When the film fully commits to that intersection between art and discovery, it becomes something genuinely special.

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[photo courtesy of MASHUP PICTURES, GATTI, SANDBOX FILMS, SCREEN AUSTRALIA]

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