Before long, Schwartzberg enrolled in fine art photography courses, which helped expand the scope of his work into more creative realms. “I started to experiment with doing time-lapse film, which had never been done before in 35-millimeter,” he says. Most often, he found himself filming nature, focusing on subjects like the aforementioned flowers and fungi. “That helped develop my sense of wonder,” he explains.

Once out of school, Schwartzberg worked on commercials and music videos, such as Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” to pay the bills, but eventually he began licensing his time-lapse footage to advertisers. That side business grew into a larger company, Energy Film Library, which encompassed not only his own work but also the work of over one hundred different filmmakers and studios. In 1996, Schwartzberg sold the company to Getty Images.

The sale enabled Schwartzberg to return to his roots as an independent filmmaker. Though he acknowledges his work is best characterized as documentary filmmaking, he prefers to describe each project as “a celebration of life.” “My films are about making the invisible visible and unlocking the secrets of nature's intelligence,” he says. His revelatory projects include the popular Disneyland attraction Soarin’ Around the World, which features aerial footage of what Schwartzberg calls “the most sacred places on the planet,” and Disney’s 2011 movie Wings of Life, which stars Meryl Streep as the voice of a flower seducing bees, bats, hummingbirds, and butterflies. “I call it a love story that feeds the earth,” the director says.

While making Wings of Life Schwartzberg started thinking about the other elements, beyond pollination, that plants need to thrive, which led him to fungi. “Most people don’t know where soil comes from—they’re clueless about the ground they’re standing on,” he says of fungi that break down organic matter, minerals, and rocks to create food for plants. Schwartzberg quickly became fascinated by the fact that in one cubic inch of soil, there can be miles of mycelium, the underground root-like structure of a fungus that plants use to communicate with one another. “This underground community is a beautiful model for our survival because it's an economy not based on greed but based on sharing, so that ecosystems flourish,” Schwartzberg says. “It’s nature's operating instructions.”

Inspired by mycelium, Schwartzberg dove into learning more, including how the oldest fossils on earth belong to fungi; how humans are more closely related to fungi than to plants; and how mycelium may be the greatest natural solution to climate change because of its ability to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. The director found these facts so, well, fantastic that he decided to combine them with his years of time-lapse 'shroom shots to create Fantastic Fungi. The film also includes commentary from experts, such as mycologist Paul Stamets, integrative medicine expert Andrew Weil, nature and food journalist Eugenia Bone, and mycological influencer William Padilla-Brown. Well-received at its premiere, the film has since been released on Netflix, making it accessible to a global audience. “Everywhere I’ve been around the world, people have seen it,” Schwartzberg says.

The documentary’s overwhelming popularity inspired Schwartzberg to expand Fantastic Fungi into a brand. “I want to celebrate everything mushroom, from visuals to artwork to products, like mushroom jerky, coffee, and chocolate, and bring our audience to young companies just getting started in the space,” he says. The robust online marketplace at fantasticfungi.com centers on mushroom-based supplements, snacks, beverages, and swag. It also includes the Forager Box, a curated selection of 'shroomy products available as a one-time purchase or quarterly subscription.

And this is only the beginning of a larger 'shroom-centric movement, according to Schwartzberg. “I’m continuing to grow Fantastic Fungi as a franchise and be a part of this awakening moment,” he says. To that end, the filmmaker has also been helping researchers at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute and UCSF study the benefits of psilocybin in experiments which utilize his film footage.

Though these studies—and all things fungi—have kept him busy in recent years, Schwartzberg never abandoned his primary passion for filmmaking. At the beginning of the pandemic, when shooting as he normally would became difficult, he decided to instead cull through the nearly 2,000 hours of footage he’d already accumulated over the years. What he found inspired him to begin what would become Gratitude Revealed. “I realized I’ve always been capturing these magic moments that encapsulate the values that add up to gratitude—curiosity, wonder, creativity, generosity, forgiveness, love, connection, and patience,” he says.