Biography
Award-winning filmmaker and former film executive Philippa Bateman is the principal of Enigma Machine, a Sydney-based production company. Enigma has a slate of scripted, documentary, and animation projects in various stages of development and production.
WASH MY SOUL IN THE RIVER’S FLOW won Best Feature Documentary at AIDC 2023, and was the top ranked documentary in The Guardian’s Top Ten Australian Films of 2022. It opened the “Resist” Festival in Paris 2024, curated by Tara June Winch and was acquired by PBS SoCal in the US. Bateman also received an ADG Nomination for Best Direction in a Debut Feature Film. Other select feature documentary credits include JUANITA NIELSEN NOW! (producer) and ALONE ACROSS AUSTRALIA (executive producer).
A recipient of the She-Doc Fellowship, Philippa was embedded at Alex Gibney’s New York based company Jigsaw in 2019. For several years, she consulted for Ian Darling’s Shark Island Institute (GOOD PITCH AUSTRALIA, VOX DOCS, and the STORY AND IMPACT LABS).
In the scripted arena, Philippa has worked as a senior Creative Executive in the development, production and acquisition of feature films for 25 years in Australia, the US and UK. She began her cinema career in script and story development in Los Angeles and London, having worked as a published feature writer in magazine journalism (Harper's Bazaar, Elle, among others) and an academic researcher in Art History and Film at the University of Sydney, from where she graduated with a degree in Philosophy and English Literature.
As creative producer, Philippa has had First Look producer deals with two US studios—Universal who recruited her for Head of Creative and Production at April Films, and United Artists (during the tenure of UA President Bingham Ray- BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, HOTEL RWANDA, CAPOTE) for whom she also consulted on acquisitions.
At her former company April Films, notable acquisitions include Geraldine Brooks’ March prior to the novel winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature 2006, which she adapted for the screen, and the first film Philippa produced under the April banner, JINDABYNE based on the Raymond Carver story 'So Much Water So Close to Home'. Directed by Ray Lawrence and starring Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne, the film was selected for Director’s Fortnight Cannes, Toronto International Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival. JINDABYNE sold to Sony Classics in the US and in Australia, it was distributed by April Distribution and Roadshow Films. The critically acclaimed film was nominated for 11 AFI Awards, and remains one of the top grossing Australian films of all time at the domestic box office. As CEO of April Films, Philippa won the SPA Independent Producer’s Award (2006).