Making Phainoterra



2025
Film
13 min

Director - Wendi Yan
CGI set and animation - Wendi Yan
Ijen and MIT footage - Iaroslav Iakubivskyi
Music composition - Jessica Shand
Editor - Wendi Yan









Phainoterra Principal Investigators
Dr. Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Physics, and Aerospace Engineering at MIT
Dr. Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department Of Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences, MIT

Proxima Kosmos Team
Director and Editor - Claire Webb
Producer - Adrianne Toomey
Managing Editor - Ulysses Yarber

About Proxima Kosmos
Developed under the leadership of Dr. Claire Isabel Webb, Proxima Kósmos is an interdisciplinary collaboration uniting leading planetary scientists, astrobiologists, designers, and science-fiction writers to construct a simulated exosolar system—each of its nine planets shaped by scientific modeling and radical imagination. The project challenges assumptions about habitability, evolution, and intelligence beyond Earth.
Commissioned by Berggruen Institute