THE FILMMAKERS

Andy Byatt
Andy Byatt’s lifelong fascination with nature founded an award-winning film career, including 19 years working for the BBC Natural History Unit. Specialising in the underwater realm, he was a key player in several BBC landmarks: the feature film Deep Blue (2003) – which grossed $34 million at the box office; “The Blue Planet” (2001); and “Planet Earth” (2006).
He left the BBC in 2007 to take his young family sailing in the Caribbean and USA so that they could have new experiences of wildlife and cultures for themselves. They developed a healthy respect for hurricanes during long summers of waiting for the season of risk to pass.

Cyril Barbançon
Cyril Barbançon was born in 1971 in the Haute Savoie in the French Alps. He spent his early years with his family in the mountains, experiencing the joys and hardships of rural isolation.
In 1998, he made his first documentary film “The Red Dwarf” about the life of red squirrels. The film was broadcast internationally and won numerous festival prizes.
On the heels of this experience, he went on to direct films for Arte, France 5, France 3 and Canal Plus. At ease with camera technology and the information systems which have revolutionized digital photography, he traveled widely, as a DOP and director, filming a multitude of species from killer whales in Antarctica, to penguins, humpback whales, lynx, bats, marmots and wolves.
A 2009 meeting with Alain Derobe (a 3D pioneer in France) offered Cyril a new challenge in the technical mastery of stereo filmmaking. In order to shoot his first films in 3D, he built his own 3D rig.
In 2010 a discussion in the middle of the desert on a shoot with Jacqueline Farmer marked the beginnings of making a theatrical film about the wind, “Hurricane: a Wind Odyssey”. What followed was four years of shooting 3D imagery across the world, in the heart of hurricanes.

Jacqueline Farmer
A childhood close to the land and nature founded Jacqueline Farmer’s lifelong interest in attempting to understand the natural world and our place in it.
Following post graduate studies in biology and broadcast journalism, she went on to work for the BBC World Service, Radio France International, and various press outlets before joining Saint Thomas in 2002.  For the past 13 years, Jacqueline has helmed award winning science and natural history projects as a director and producer, working with National Geographic, Discovery, France 2, Arte, Channel Four, NHK, TVE, SVT etc. on numerous films and series. “Hurricane” is her first feature film.

Frédérique Zepter
A film graduate in France and the US, Frédérique Zepter has credits as a copywriter, script doctor, script editor, writer and supervisor of scripts for various production companies. After working in London and Los Angeles, she moved to Brazil for a number of years, where she studied. While there, she wrote the film “Candomblé”, inspired by the 70s classic film ‘Vanishing Point’.

Artistic credits

Technical credits