On the occasion of the release of “Flo”, a little focus on Stéphane Caillard, the interpreter of the navigator Florence Arthaud who tragically died in 2015.
First feature film by Géraldine Danon, daughter of producer Raymond Danon and goddaughter of Alain Delon, the biopic Flo was released in cinemas on November 1st. To play the navigator Florence Arthaud, who died suddenly in 2015 in a helicopter accident, the director chose Stéphane Caillard, a 35-year-old actress who already had a successful career.
Shaped by courses and internships which led her to travel between France, Belgium and England, Stéphane began as an extra in the TV films La Maison d’Alexina (1999) and Rue Oberkampf (2000). Then, she multiplied furtive appearances in series like The Master of the Zodiac, Commissaire Valence, The Little Murders of Agatha Christie and Borgia.
She also films for the big screen in It’s beautiful in a city at night by Richard Bohringer and Le Temps de la kermesse est finie by Frédéric Chignac. In the road movie Rabat in 2011, she plays a hitchhiker trying to get to Spain. That same year, she played young Janon, the wife of Gérard Lanvin, in the gangster film Les Lyonnais by Olivier Marchal.
David Koskas/Netflix Stéphane Caillard and Nassim Lyes
After a few performances in the detective series RIS police scientifique and Cherif in the early 2010s, Stéphane Caillard landed her first major role in the historical series La Vie Avant Elles on France 3. She plays Alma, a law student who seeks to clear the his father’s honor against the Coal Mines who accuse him of being responsible for a mining explosion.
In the cinema, Stéphane acts as a more or less striking second knife in the wine drama Premiers crus (2015), the dramatic comedy Juillet Août (2016), the action film Bastille Day (id.) and the feature film about a party far-right Chez nous (2017). In the thriller Furie, the actress plays Adama’s partner Niane, whose house is squatted.
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More present on television, Stéphane plays important roles in the two seasons of Marseille, where she plays Julia, a journalist who is the daughter of the outgoing mayor (Gérard Depardieu). She also slips into the skin of a gendarme recently arrived in Guyana in Maroni and plays one of the protagonists of The War of the Worlds, a Canal+ science fiction series.
Metropolitan Filmexport
Stéphane Caillard in “Flo”
In 2023, Stéphane Caillard is chosen to play the navigator Florence Arthaud in the biopic Flo by Géraldine Danon. The director confides: “We had already spoken on the phone and I asked her if I wasn’t bothering her and she told me that she had a 2-year-old daughter, so she had been ‘on deck’ for a while . I saw it as an excellent omen!”
“I tried to bring her everything I knew about Florence and all the colors of her that I wanted to find. She then worked by drawing on readings, interviews, etc. All this work having been accomplished in so upstream and then, on the set, things were quite fluid. Stéphane had this wonderful ability to be able to embody Florence from the age of 17 to the end of her life.”
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“We used very little prosthetics or makeup, preferring to change his posture, his gait or his voice according to the age of the character”. The actress remembers: “I had to be in good shape, not only for the scenes at sea which require real condition but also to ensure filming which was quite long. This is also the case for Géraldine and the team.”
Unaccustomed to the sea, Stéphane took a sailing course before and during filming: two advisors were by his side to teach him the right actions: “Stéphane quickly became very comfortable on boats, whether monohulls or trimarans. She does all the maneuvers in the film. She is the one who climbs the mast”concludes Géraldine Danon.