A Life Illuminated

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 REVIEW! A Life Illuminated is a remarkable documentary telling the story of Dr. Edie Widder and her decades-long quest to study bioluminescence in the deep ocean. Way down, below the reach of sunlight, animals make their own light through a biochemical process. This is a profound and poorly understood phenomenon — our knowledge has been limited by our technology. First, it is difficult to reach and study great depths, and second, it is incredibly difficult to capture such low-light phenomena. This is a story of awe and wonder, backed by perseverance, tenacity, and human ingenuity.

Widder is especially an expert in the “flashback” phenomenon,” where if creatures in the deep ocean are given two pulses of blue light, their bioluminescence will activate, causing them to reveal themselves. She witnessed this personally on expeditions, including one in a “hard suit,” almost like a suit of armor, or a one-person submersible that can survive the pressures of the deep. However, the cameras of the time were not up to capturing this on film. So much like Jodie Foster in Contact, she had only her first-hand experiences to convey, but no documentation. She dedicated her life and research to better understanding this, which necessitated the invention of new technology.

“Widder is especially an expert in the “flashback” phenomenon, where if creatures in the deep ocean are given two pulses of blue light, their bioluminescence will activate, causing them to reveal themselves.”

Widder and her team of researchers later developed the “splat screen,” which stimulates organisms as they encounter an advancing mesh, in the focal plane of a low-light camera. The results were revealing, but still grainy, black and while, and not indicative of normal animal behavior. Widder also achieved a certain amount of fame by building a system that captured the first live footage of a giant squid.  This wasn’t her field of study, and she was the underdog on a voyage, funded by a TV program, with two other giant squid experts competing to achieve this feat.  She had learned, through her own research, that some creatures are attracted to certain bioluminescent pulses, and built a rig to mimic this.  It worked, and the result is the rarest of rare major scientific achievements captured on video.

In her quest to understand bioluminescence, some expeditions were a major bust, resulting in flooded cameras and disappointing scientific returns. Because they take so much money to mount, each failure puts your future in jeopardy, in terms of funding. Still, Dr. Widder persevered. In the most recent expedition, with OceanX, she was able to use Triton submersibles, which can hold three passengers, a major advance over the one or two-person previous operations. Camera technology had also advanced, with new super-sensitive low-light detectors. The result, the climax of A Life Illuminated, is profound and revelatory, a monument to science, technology, human ingenuity, and our understanding of life on Earth.