STEPHANIE FALKEIS is a multilingual writer and director from the Austrian Alps, currently based between New York City, Paris and Vienna. She holds an M.F.A. in Film Directing and Screenwriting from Columbia University, where she was a FULBRIGHT Fellow and taught film history. Through her writing and films, Stephanie questions notions of otherness and belonging, the blurring of personal and political identities, and our fraught relationship to the natural world. Her latest short film premiered at DIAGONALE Festival of Austrian Film and Hofer Filmtage.
In 2024, Stephanie received the FIRST FEATURE FELLOWSHIP (Startstipendium) from the Austrian Ministry of Culture for her feature debut in development. She has also been honoured as a 2024 scriptLAB Fellow, a 2023 Rainin Grant Finalist, a 2022 CANNESFILM Residency Talent, a 2021 SLOAN Science&Film Fellow and a 2020 BAFTA Newcomer Talent. Stephanie’s historical miniseries THE INVISIBLE SISTER, about the life of Margarete Wittgenstein, received Austria’s inaugural «Heldinnen in Serie» Commissioning Grant and her debut feature as writer-director REQUIEM FOR A GLACIER was selected for a residency by Studiocanal France and placed on The Athena List. She is mentored by dramaturges Olivia Hetreed and Géraldine Bajard, respectively.
Stephanie's work has been supported by the SLOAN Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the British Academy of Film and Television BAFTA, New York Women in Film and Television NYWIFT, the Austrian Ministry and the City of Vienna Film Funds, the Screenplay Forum Vienna, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York ACFNY and Museum of the Moving Image MOMI. Her films have screened internationally in cinemas, art galleries and film festivals. Her writing has been published by Interval/Unstapled Press, Schau Kunstmagazin, DerStandard and Edition Angewandte.
As an educator, Stephanie taught a colloquium in European film history for undergraduate students at Columbia University. She taught filmmaking workshops for graduate students from University of Applied Arts Vienna, University of Lichtenstein, Bergen School of Architecture, University of Innsbruck and University of Kassel.
As a producer, Stephanie worked on several award-winning films until 2020. Before focusing on filmmaking, she worked in Austrian theatre and for the Vienna State Opera. She is the founder and curator of the Austrian American Short Film Festival AASFF@ACFNY (since 2015) and co-founder and co-director of the Austrian production label SISTERLY PICTURES (since 2021). She holds a Magistra of Arts in Transmedia Art from the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Studio Brigitte Kowanz).
