Stephanie Daley

Stephanie Daley (2007)

The truth is what we believe.

Stephanie collapses in a pool of blood while on a school skiing trip. A doctor discovers that the blood is the after-effects of giving birth. Soon afterward, the body of a newborn baby is found in a toilet, its mouth blocked with toilet paper. Despite Stephanie's insistence that her child was stillborn and that she had no idea that she was pregnant, she is arrested for the murder of the child.

Date of release
2007-04-20
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (35)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
Drama
Director
Hilary Brougher

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award

Stephanie Daley is a 2006 drama film written and directed by Hilary Brougher. The film stars Amber Tamblyn, Melissa Leo, Tilda Swinton and Timothy Hutton. The film, which received a limited release in North America on April 20, 2007, focuses on the issue of teenage pregnancy.

Production

Hilary Brougher began writing the script in 1999. Brougher said it arose from her fascination with the idea that people lead secret lives or keep aspects of their lives concealed from their loved ones. "After I started writing it, I began noticing items in the news. And, people started to tell me about their unexpected and hidden pregnancies–not all of which ended tragically.

Brougher added, "I realized that news stories just present the facts, but they don't delve into emotional realities and subtleties of situations...What happens to Stephanie is the sum of many missed opportunities of communication. I wanted to explore how and why that happened, and how, when she starts talking to her mom and to the psychologist, it's transformative in all their lives."

In her research on concealed pregnancies and women accused of neonaticide, Brougher came upon many cases of young women who went into shock or disassociation while in labor. Though safe-haven laws have been enacted to combat the problem of infanticide, Brougher argued the laws do not address the root cause of pregnancy denial and concealment, saying, "[A lot of these women] can't even admit to themselves that they're pregnant.

Of the script, Brougher said, "I'd like audiences to think about what happens to a woman during pregnancy, rather than just the results. There are a lot of films about what happens when a baby is brought home, but Stephanie Daley is about the window of time during pregnancy, when a woman questions her own identity and her relationship to the world."

The script went through development at the Sundance Institute in 2001. Before finishing the script, Brougher gave birth to twins. As the film was securing financing in the fall of 2004, Tilda Swinton, who had read the script on the recommendation of her agent, signed on to star as Lydie and also as an executive producer. Amber Tamblyn signed on that December.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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