Director/Producer, iKandy Films
Katrina is the director and co-producer of How To Poison A Planet, a feature documentary that exposes the global PFAS chemical contamination crisis. Featuring actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, the film was commissioned by Stan and premiered in 2024.
How To Poison A Planet won The Documentary Award at the Walkley Awards in 2024 and Katrina also received a second Walkley Award and a Kennedy Award in 2023 for the joint investigation into the PFAS contamination of the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community, a story prominently featured in the documentary.
Since the film's release, Katrina has been invited to speak about the film and the PFAS issue at the Australian Federal Parliament and the French Senate as well as at a number of NGOs in the US and Europe.
She is currently co-directing and co-producing a four-part series with iKandy Films, set to premiere on Stan in 2026.
In 2020, Katrina was part of Screen Australia's Emerging Filmmaker Enterprise Program.
What does it take to create long-form stories that cut through the noise—and stay with people? This session brings together bold Australian storytellers reshaping the landscape. Go behind the scenes of How To Poison A Planet, the new Stan documentary featuring Mark Ruffalo and directed by first-timer Katrina McGowan. Hear from Prison Chronicles podcaster Sid Punts, whose gripping true crime series tells the raw, rarely-heard stories of ex-prison officers dealing with daily violence and survival inside maximum-security prisons. With Curious Media’s Poppy Reid and B&T's Arvind Hickman, the session will also unpack views around content quotas, funding and the fight to keep local storytelling alive.