The Company

For more than thirty years, one question has kept drawing me into very different worlds: how do people make sense of life?

That curiosity has taken me across the globe — from documenting Benedictine monk and mystic Bede Griffiths searching for “the other half of his soul” in rural India, to exploring the ecological vision of cultural historian Thomas Berry in Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Universe; from filming with the Sioux in South Dakota to entering the world of a remarkable young Melbourne man living with schizophrenia. In partnership with philosopher Peter Singer, I also told the story of Henry Spira, the activist who transformed the international animal rights movement.

That exploration continued in A Family Divided, following a former Sierra Leonean broadcaster and refugee confronting what it means to belong in a new country, and Seeing From Within, an intimate portrait of writer, philanthropist and cultural figure Barbara Blackman, whose extraordinary life was never defined by her blindness.

The subjects have changed enormously, but the enquiry has remained remarkably consistent. I have always been drawn to people who challenge accepted ways of seeing the world — outsiders, thinkers, activists and seekers — and to the contradictions, vulnerabilities, humour and unexpected connections that reveal who people really are. I am interested in ideas, but even more interested in what happens when those ideas collide with the messy physical realities of being alive.

Today, that same curiosity is taking the work into new forms. Digital Reflux, a six-part drama, explores technology, intimacy, family and the ways we outsource human connection. Mentors turns to the relationships that can alter the course of a life — and what may happen when one person truly sees another.

More Than Illusion Media is the home for that continuing enquiry: independent, human-centred storytelling driven by curiosity about consciousness, connection, identity and what it means to be fully alive.