STÉPHANIE JOALLAND

Stéphanie Joalland a London-based writer-director with her own production company Frenzy Films. She also has extensive experience developing TV series for French TV and co-created the animated version of VALERIAN for Luc Besson's EuropaCorp. Her feature film THE QUIET HOUR starring Dakota Blue Richards premiered on Sky Cinema in the UK and was released on Netflix. Her feature projects have received the support of Sofia Meeting, Film London PFM, European Genre Forum, and Frontières International co-production Market. An alumna of Berlinale Talents, she is represented by Zero Gravity Management in the U.S. as a writer-director. She teaches screenwriting at U.A.L.’s London College of Communication, NFTS, on the Raindance MA in Filmmaking with De Montfort University and the MSt in Writing for Performance at the University of Cambridge.

​Q: Who’s your favourite director?

A: Peter Weir, because he directed one of my favourite films ever, the haunting "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and because he's so versatile yet so consistently brilliant at what he does. 


Q: What’s the best opening in your opinion?

A: I am still under the spell of "Angel Heart"'s opening with the soul-stirring neo-noir atmosphere, probably because it was one of the first supernatural thrillers I ever watched and I had no idea what had just hit me when I saw it. 


Q: What’s the fictional journey you’d most like to take?

A: I'd like to be onboard of the spaceship of  Dan Simmons's  "Hyperion" towards a mysterious planet which reverses time. The spaceship of "2001: A Space Odyssey" would do as well.


Q: What’s the most memorable line of dialogue?

A: The dying replicant Roy Batty reflecting on his mortality, the tragedy of human experience beautifully encapsulated in a few lines.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die".


Q: What’s your most romantic encounter in a film?

A: Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (the 1978 version of course). There is so much chemistry between them it's utterly devastating when she falls asleep and her body crumbles after he tries to wake her.

At Euroscript, Stéphanie regularly runs the 3 evenings course Write The Micro-Budget Feature