Tanya Stephan is a BAFTA and multi-award winning director of British and international documentaries. Her films seek out the powerful human stories behind the headlines, creating beautifully crafted and compelling narratives, with cinematic flair and purpose.
In 2022 she won a BAFTA , a Grierson and an RTS Award for her feature-length true crime documentary about the transatlantic mother and baby homes scandal The Missing Children. She was also long-listed for the BAFTA Craft Award for Best Director (Factual) and nominated for the Prix Italia for Best Documentary.
Her most recent film Ukraine’s War Diaries (2023) is a ground-breaking creative documentary told through the personal, self-shot stories of five Ukrainians on the frontline and in cities under attack over the course of a year. The film’s broadcast marked the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for BBC ONE and was nominated for a Rose D’Or in 2023..
Stephan has directed twelve singles and four series for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and SVOD. She has filmed and directed high profile documentaries about mental health (Sheridan Smith: Becoming Mum, ITV), chronic addiction (Compulsion, BBC2), the unprecedented story of an anonymous egg donor tracking down her biological children (Donor Mum, BBC ONE), and the lives of two young girls in a Muslim faith school (Muslim School, C4).
After a degree in History at Cambridge, she began her career as a radio journalist freelancing for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio Scotland. She later trained in Documentary Directing at the National Film and Television school with a scholarship from the British Federation of Women Graduates.
Her graduation film Naz about the daughter of Zoora Shah who was serving a life sentence for poisoning her partner with arsenic, was nominated for an RTS Best Student Documentary Award. Her first film, for a groundbreaking series about teenagers and mental health Inside My Head (C4), was nominated for an RTS Education Award for Best Single Documentary and shortlisted for a Grierson Award for Best Newcomer.
From a background in self-shooting observational documentaries, she is now focusing on directing premium series and feature documentaries.
In January 2023 she gave the Royal Television Society Student Masterclass on Documentary Directing at the British Film Institute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjFs5ap90_Q
