Barbara Stepansky: Tension & Suspense in Storytelling

Like many film school students, Barbara Stepansky looked to childhood events for a suitable thesis film for her graduate degree at American Film Institute. Only Barbara’s childhood was anything but ordinary.  The event she selected to illuminate was entrenched in the dark days of the Cold War, when her father’s involvement in the Solidarity Movement led to the Stepansky family escaping to West Germany with few clothes and even less possessions.  Barbara’s gripping short THE TROJAN COW captured the hearts of audiences worldwide, eventually winning awards such as the Directors Guild Diversity Award and the Excellence in Filmmaking Award at the Angelus Student Film Festival. THE TROJAN COW was eventually short-listed for the Academy Awards, Live Action Shorts.

THE TROJAN COW follows the story of two East German teens as they illegally cross the border to West Germany in 1973 inside the belly of a fake hollow cow, sparking unexpected emotions between the two, as political tension and hostility swirls around them. Born in Poland and raised in Germany,  Barbara recalls close calls her family endured at the border and how this informed her work. “My father was fearless,” she remembers, as he elected “to escape with his family rather than face the oppression and certain prison if he stayed.” Once in film school, Barbara became fascinated with the German film, THE TUNNEL (director, Roland Richter), which told the story of a German athlete’s escape to West Berlin.

This January, audiences at Windrider will be able to revisit the award-winning THE TROJAN COW in Park City during Windrider 2015, which is an opportunity Barbara relishes. “My experience with the Windrider audience has been especially gratifying. The appreciation, the dialogue that occurs – this is not something that happens everyday. I am thrilled to bring TROJAN COW and engage with a new audience this January.”

Barbara is also the recipient of the Mary Pickford Foundation Scholarship and the Franklin J. Schaffner AFI Fellow Award.  She is now an award winning independent feature film director and writer, Barbara turned her attention to thrillers, psychological dramas and horror genre, her first feature was HURT, a thriller about a family manipulated by a mysterious foster child, starring Melora Walters (BIG LOVE) and William Mapother (LOST, THE MENTALIST). Her second effort, FUGUE, a haunting thriller take on Jane Eyre, broke into the “Top 10 most downloaded horror film on ITunes.”  Barbara’s most successful film to date has been the recent TAKEN FOR RANSOM, a thriller that aired on Lifetime and starred Teri Polo, Chazz Palminteri and Tia Carrere.  TAKEN FOR RANSOM  tells the story of a high powered woman who eventually discovers that someone close to her may be behind her subsequent abduction and kidnapping. “We did so much with very little,” Barbara recalls.
Just recently, the uber talented Stepansky won the prestigious Nicholls Fellowship for her screenplay SUGAR IN MY VEINS. Barbara was one of five fellows chosen from a pool of 7,251 applicants. SUGAR is a coming of age story about a brilliant adolescent musician who finds her place in this world through a love of music and the love of a man she can’t have. Barbara is in development on this project as well as others. Barbara’s latest production is the source of overwhelming joy; she and Roberto gave birth to son Ferdinand late last year, so directing gigs have taken a temporary backseat.

Barbara relates that creating visual tension and suspense is what drew her to the thriller genre; the very elements that work so successfully in Trojan Cow. But now, Barbara is ready to tackle other stories and different genres. “I’ve paid my dues and learned so much, but right now I would like to get back to emotionally charged coming of age stories, perhaps historical accounts. “I am really proud of Trojan Cow.  That film was my blood, sweat and tears.”
As for other career plans, Barbara remains steadfast.  “For me, there never was a Plan B.  Never a question to what I would do.”  Audiences everywhere are glad for that.