ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
A Traumatic Brain Injury leads a filmmaker into a deep exploration of Flow State, where personal resilience merges with scientific revelation.

SYNOPSIS
INTO THE FLOW (Working Title) follows director Lizzy Fowler as she collaborates with neuroscientists, psychologists, flow masters, and everyday people to better understand the properties of flow. Her personal experience while recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and life threatening coma has launched a quest for knowledge and acceptance.

From Croatian spear fishermen to birthing mothers, a blind jazz musician, a geriatric rock-climbing pioneer, and monks, Lizzy makes friends around the world, creating the largest ever data set on flow state. With the help of special sensors created by leading neuroscientists, at Oxford and St. Andrews, Lizzy’s real-time data could help revise Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 60-year-old framework on flow. While flow is commonly tied to peak performance, Lizzy’s journey uncovers its broader significance for humanity.

Motivated by a quest for deeper insights on flow, Lizzy embraces her love for running—a vital element of her recovery. Reflecting on her post-coma journals, she finds running restored her sense of self she thought she lost after the coma. Immersing herself deeper in ultra running, she seeks to uncover the aspects of flow that elude scientific explanation, drawing from her own visceral human experience to lead her quest.

Personal and global, science-driven and somatic, adventurous and contemplative, Untitled Flow Documentary unites a wide array of researchers and practitioners to advance the conversation on one of the most powerful aspects of the human mind.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Lizzy Fowler
SCREENWRITER Vickie Curtis
PRODUCER Vickie Curtis, Steven Siig, Lizzy Fowler
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Doug Robinson, Brian Radford
Director of Photography Pete Alton
Cinematographer Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers, Kyle Gustafson, Ben Cook, Kassie Gustafson
EDITOR Dave Wruck