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Stéphane Meunier

France

Bio

Stéphane Meunier grew up in Réunion, then in Lyon, where he passed his baccalaureate.

Without any clear ideas about his future, and disconnected from traditional studies, he decided ahead of time to do his military service as a long-term posting, serving as a UN peacekeeper (blue helmet) in Lebanon. There, at the request of Colonel Iacconi, who wanted to document the life of the unit, he filmed and photographed every day.

Before his return to France, the colonel asked him about his plans, and what he read in Stéphane’s eyes showed him that things were really not clear. He then said this decisive sentence: “You know, Meunier, filming and photography can be a career.”

As a young man, he had briefly seen himself as a journalist; he would blend all of that together and make it his future.

“Filming and photographing made me want to film and photograph,” he sums up.

After studying at CERIS (Centre d’Étude et de Recherche de l’Image et du Son) between 1984 and 1986, through sheer persistence he joined the newsroom at M6. For the channel, he covered the war in Lebanon, the workers’ strikes in Poland, and the Iran-Iraq war, and from 1987 onward, he joined the Capa agency.

He would travel the world making reports and documentaries. Some of them won awards.

In 1998, he turned his camera on the French national football team and followed them throughout their epic run. “Les Yeux dans les Bleus” (“The Eyes in the Blues”) won the 7 d’Or award for best documentary.

It was also during this shoot that he picked up his camera again, photographing the team’s private life in parallel with the filming.

He then founded his first production company: 2P2L. There, too, his gift for immersive storytelling shone through. He also directed several advertising films featuring Zinedine Zidane.

In 2004, he underwent another transformation, choosing to devote himself solely to fiction — no longer just bearing witness, but also writing scripts.

Ma Terminale (25 episodes for M6), Foudre for France Télévisions, and Fortunes for Arte are among his most notable works.

With his current production company, Terence Films, founded in 2005, he also produced Les Innocents for TF1 in 2017, which was a major success, and he is currently working on the sixth season of Cut for France Télévisions.

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