Becoming the Phoenix

Brain injury and documentary filmmaking through a mythic lens.

When I first began making a brain injury film, back in 2020, it was an entirely different film. If you know, you know!

I was drinking information out of a firehose. Everywhere I turned there were new insights, connective threads, and survivor stories that blew my mind. I was overwhelmed, and at times a martyr for the cause.

The main question on my mind was 'How was brain injury everywhere, but nobody was talking about it?'

Important context: An estimated 2.8 million new brain injury cases emerge a year, but brain injury doesn’t just happen in an instant. It creates a ripple effect that can shape a person’s life over time. Untreated or unrecognized brain injuries have been linked to mental health challenges, involvement with the criminal justice system, housing instability, and cycles of domestic or relational harm.

That may sound frightening, but I don’t believe it has to be. When these patterns are named, they can be changed. And when people are given context instead of blame, healing becomes possible.

At first, I thought the film would be about the human faces of the hard hitting statistics and the systemic inequalities.

But the deeper I went into the research, the more the story began to change me.

And in changing me, it changed the film.

Over time, this project revealed itself not just as a film about brain injury, but as a meditation on identity, transformation, and the mythic nature of being human.

The Moment the Phoenix Appeared

About a year and a half ago, I landed on the symbol of the Phoenix. You can see some of my early visual development work in the slideshow below.

Brain injury has a way of burning everything down. Sense of self. Cognitive capacity. Emotional regulation. Confidence. Relationships. The future you thought you were moving toward.

For so many people, brain injury is a moment of total annihilation.

And yet, again and again, I heard the same thing from survivors:

“I was never the same after… but I became something else.”

That’s the Phoenix.

Not a return to what was, but a transformation into something new.

I love this quote in Parable of a Sower by Octavia Butler.

“In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.”

It felt like an ah-ha moment. Intuitive and obvious. So encompassing.

And synchronistically, many brain injury survivors I have met, also see the phoenix as their own personal legend as well.

Zooming Out: From Snapshot to Story

One of the core ideas that began shaping this film is this: When we look at our lives in snapshots, things can feel unbearably dark, dense, or unfair.

Trauma freezes moments in time. Brain injury collapses timelines. Pain narrows our perspective.

But when we zoom out, when we look at our lives as a whole arc, patterns, meaning and evolution become visible. As above, so below. Our inner worlds reflect our outer ones. Our breakdowns often hold the seeds of our breakthroughs.

And our greatest challenges, when viewed in the full context of a life, can become our greatest teachers.

This belief reshaped how I wanted to tell this story.

Why This Film Became Mythic

Most mental health documentaries are medical or informational by design. They explain, educate, and diagnose. That work is vital. But it’s not the full truth of the human experience.

Because living with brain injury, or trauma, or grief, or loss, is not just clinical. It’s emotional. Sensory. Spiritual. Surreal. At times, it feels unreal. Fragmented. Dreamlike.

So I asked myself:

Why would I tell a story about altered reality using only literal tools?

That question is what led this film into mythic magical realism.

Animation.

Dance.

Movement.

Symbolism.

Color.

Costume.

These details allow us to communicate the internal experiences that words and data alone can’t touch.

Designing Meaning, Intentionally

One of the places this philosophy shows up is in the visual language of the film.

Nonfiction doesn’t often get permission to play the same way that scripted films do with color theory, composition, costume, or symbolism with intention. But I believe documentaries can have that same creative rigor.

It has been really an incredibly meaningful and fun experience to see where I can bring in motifs and easter eggs that subtly carry the Phoenix motif, and other themes of the film.

For my own first production last march, I wanted to start incorporating elements of my own story into the film. For those of you who don’t know, I had absolutely no idea that I was a brain injury survivor before starting this film. (hello years of being a flyer and an assault that left me unconscious right before college - boy did that realization explain a lot about my mental health challenges!).

I, in essence, have become like a phoenix in my healing journey. Realizing that I needed to pivot and start over, burn my life down to its essence, and rise in truth. It has been a scary, liberating, necessary journey, and it has been enabled because of this film and the lessons I’ve learned and people I’ve met along the way.

How do I become a phoenix? well….

We found a location that had a bird like cage, and with the help of a incredibly talented art directo, (s/o Kat!) we dressed my character to echo Phoenix imagery. We even discovered a sweater with feathers.

These choices while subtle become breadcrumbs for the subconscious. And as you watch the film, you may notice these visual echoes layered throughout. These are just the kinds of things that make storytelling fun for me...building worlds and layers in those worlds.

Listening to the Universe

Along the way, I’ve received what I can only describe as nudges. Synchronicities. Moments of clarity. Signs that this was the exact path I was meant to be on.

This film has asked me to trust intuition alongside research. To believe that myth and medicine can coexist. That art and science don’t compete, they complete each other.

And that telling a story about mental health doesn’t mean flattening it into something palatable or purely informative.

It can be human.

It can be messy.

It can be epic.

The Phoenix Isn’t the End—It’s the Arc

The Phoenix doesn’t rise because it wants to.

It rises because it has no other choice.

Fall of the Phoenix is about honoring the full arc of becoming. About seeing our lives not as isolated moments of pain, but as unfolding stories of transformation.

If we zoom out far enough, I truly believe we all have a purpose. A reason for being. And sometimes, the fire is not the punishment ... it’s the initiation.

Rise With Us

Independent filmmaking is hard work, with a lot of long hours and free labor. I have spent the last 5.5 years pouring everything I have into this and I know that the world needs it! We need more stories about hope and resilience in the face of challenges.

If you would like to learn more please visit fallofthephoenixfilm.com

If you would like to contribute financially, or buy me a coffee, you can do so at

https://fallofthephoenix.allyrafundraising.com/