Championing Stories with Humanity: Award-winning Director Neasa Hardiman
- emily4478
- 8 hours ago
- 7 min read
An interview with Neasa Hardiman
"I want my stories to be about something truthful, something that has meaning and resonance culturally"
Neasa Hardiman is a BAFTA-winning screen director, writer, and producer whose career is defined by its strong cinematic sensibility and emotionally resonant, often female-led storytelling. Here, Neasa shares the fascinating intersection of her extensive experience directing prestige drama productions, including her recent work for Netflix. We delve into the ethics that guide her decision-making in high-stakes production environments, and uncover the personality and approach Neasa brings to translating powerful visions onto the screen. The Industry Leaders meets one of the world's most compelling directors.
Having worked extensively across both TV and feature film, what are some of the most persistent, subtle, or overt gender-based challenges you've encountered in the director's chair, a role historically dominated by men?
When I was starting out, an agent offered to represent me, but only “for children’s films and rom-coms,” because of my sex. Later, financiers or producers would sometimes declare that I had “a man’s mind.” All of this is nonsense, of course. Happily things have changed a lot in the last ten years. I never have to call out sexist banter on set any more.
Female directors remain pretty unusual, though, at only about 16% overall of those directing commercial films and ‘prestige’ TV drama. Often when I walk on set, I’m the first woman the crew has worked with. It can take a minute, but once they understand I know what I’m doing, it’s all great.
Financiers need a different kind of reassurance. They must feel comfortable that they’re investing in the right person. Sometimes that can lead them to an inadvertent idée fixe that the best director is the deep-voiced man in a baseball cap. Of course the data reveals something different: dollar for dollar, films helmed by women make bigger profits at the box office!
You've directed major episodes of shows like Happy Valley and Jessica Jones, which feature powerful female protagonists. Do you feel your perspective as a woman inherently brings a distinctive feminist voice or creative approach to material, particularly in the thriller or sci-fi genres you often work within?
The Roman playwright Terence was a slave. When asked how he could write so well about emperors, he responded “I am human. There is nothing of the human that’s alien to me.” I feel that way
too: there’s nothing of the human that’s alien to me. Nobody’s taste, talent or intellectual proclivities are determined by sex. I look for stories where everyone is afforded their full humanity: I don’t believe anyone wants to see a shallow or cliché character.
I’m particularly drawn to tense, uneasy stories with thriller and/or sci-fi elements. Those stories are not inherently gendered. I was really shocked as an adult when someone mentioned to me that Star Wars was ‘for boys.’ How ridiculous. I certainly never felt that way; I was compelled by it as a little girl. There is nothing of the human that’s alien to me. That said, it’s been a delight over the past years to see more flawed and complicated women appear
on screen, afforded real agency in thrillers and hard science fiction.
As a highly successful female director, what is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to emerging women filmmakers who are navigating a high-budget global industry?
Ignore people who reference your sex as a reason for your success or failure. Make the work as good as you possibly can every minute of every day. Be ready to be criticised. Stay open and keep learning. It’s the best job in the world, and it only gets better.
You are known to be closely engaged with emerging technologies. How do you view the rise of Generative AI - as an opportunity for disruptive business models and new creative tools, or as a fundamental threat to the craft of writing and directing?
Automation anxiety has been an artefact of Western culture for generations, and this is its latest iteration. When the fanfare dies down, we’ll understand AI as a terrific polymorphic tool. But it has limitations, like every tool.
The ‘intelligence’ part of ‘artificial intelligence’ is an unfortunate misnomer. The way it functions is not even close to an approximation of thinking. AI is by definition an impressively logical recombiner of established patterns. In art and music, we have a term for the logical recombining of established patterns: cliché. AI, by definition, generates cliché.
AI is no threat to creative people. For any art to have real resonance and meaning, it has to originate in the chaotic emotive connections of human minds. True emotional power onscreen - the spellbinding meaning we crave in storytelling - will always require human intuition. Our wild connections, our trips and flaws are where the magic of art lives.
In the context of visual arts, where you have a strong background, do you believe AI can truly produce work with the kind of nuance, political intervention, or emotional core that you strive for in your films?
See above!
The ethical use of AI in filmmaking is a growing concern. What guardrails or ethical principles do you think the industry needs to immediately establish to protect human artists and ensure the integrity of the work?
I’ve given this some thought. First off, we need to ensure that artists’ work cannot be used to train AI without explicit permission and proper compensation. Secondly, an actor must own any and all simulacra of themself and their voice. And lastly, we know that AI can generate works full of ugly cliché and human prejudice. For this reason, generative AI must be governed by human authorship.
The shift to streaming platforms has changed how content is consumed globally. As a director who has worked for both Amazon and Netflix, how has this model changed your approach to storytelling and your ability to reach international audiences?
Honestly, good storytelling is pretty universal. It can be local, and as long as it’s not parochial, audiences across the world will respond. But there are two major advantages in the bigger canvas the global streamers give directors. The first is time. The second is the opportunity to use the full artillery of cinema to amplify emotion in design, costume, cinematography, soundscape and score.
With so much content being produced, what strategies are most effective for a film to cut through the noise and compel viewers—many of whom are on social media—to commit to watching a full feature or series?
Make a great story that you know to be emotionally raw and truthful. There’s really no other way.
Your film Sea Fever deals with concepts of isolation and ecosystem fragility. Do you feel the constant, immediate feedback loop of social media makes it harder or easier to tell nuanced stories about complex global issues?
Social media have made nuanced communication challenging, that’s for sure. They can favour declaration over discussion, which makes for dull reading. In terms of Sea Fever and thematic storytelling, though, it’s clear that audiences still have an appetite for long, nuanced, thematically driven narratives. Stories are how we think, after all. We’re creatures of metaphor and parable. Stories are the primal way we have to convey ideas with nuance. This is particularly so in film and TV. We’ll binge-watch a great screen story for hours on end. We’re happy to immerse ourselves in complex social questions when they’re articulated through aesthetic and emotive pleasures. We want to be made to feel and to think. It’s what makes screen storytelling the preeminent art form of our time, in my view.
Your PhD thesis focused on mainstream cinema as a means for social and political intervention. Can you elaborate on the importance of choosing projects you are ethically aligned with and how that ethos guided your choices for films like Sea Fever?
Steve Bannon once posited that ‘politics is downstream of culture.’ In other words, cultural production has some kind of impact on what’s politically acceptable. I think he may be right about that. It’s my view that every story asks a question. That’s what stories are for: exploring the “what happens if…” scenario. A good story won’t give you a simple answer. It will explore its question from every angle, leaving room for the person experiencing the story to make up their own mind.
When I make a story, I want to ask questions that touch on what might be a cultural bruise - the things we find conflicting or complicated. I want the story to be as emotionally potent as I can make it. I want people to feel moved. Feeling moved is powerful - it can make us change our mind about something. For that reason, I believe it’s important to consider carefully what stories I can tell.
You've mentioned being interested in stories that ask questions about how science and ethics inform our behaviour toward community and the planet. What is your internal checklist or criteria for determining if a script meets your standard for ethical and intellectual "chewiness"?
I love film making that asks challenging questions, explores complexity and conflicts, and does so using the full artillery of cinema. I want my stories to be about something truthful, something that has meaning and resonance culturally. I’m fascinated by scientific endeavour, by the productive tension between intuition and logic, by the discipline of constantly assuming you’re wrong. I’m fascinated by human drama, by the difficulty we have in truly communicating with one another. I’m compelled by the thorny challenge of power between people, how it gets used and abused. Cinematically, I love delivering these preoccupations through a fully immersive experience. I want my work to make people think as well as feel. I want to make those stories out of powerful performances, emotive images and thrilling soundscapes.
Your filmography includes works that explore significant social issues, such as your documentaries such as Ireland's Teenage Criminals. For you, what is the director's ethical responsibility to society, beyond simply entertaining an audience?
I think our job is to tell the truth, be that literally through documentary, or figuratively through fiction. Having done both, I’ve found exploring challenging questions through fiction the most powerful. The research process is the same. But a fictional story can be set in the past, in a speculative future, or somewhere else entirely. Wherever it’s set, it’s always asking something about the present. A different setting has the advantage of bringing people to feelings and ideas from a completely fresh angle. After all, we want to be transported - in both senses of the word - when we go to the movies.
Neasa Hardiman is a BAFTA-winning screen director, writer, and producer whose career spans prestige TV drama and feature film. Born in Dublin, she took a PhD from Trinity College, while writing and directing theatre, documentaries and original screen dramas, before her strong cinematic sensibility led her to international prominence. Known for her visually distinctive, emotionally resonant, and often female-led storytelling, Neasa has made numerous prestige dramas, winning a slew of international awards. Her début feature film, acclaimed sci-fi thriller Sea Fever, premiered on the opening night of TIFF 2019. Most recently, Neasa directed Netflix global hit Untamed, starring Eric Bana.
