Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian

Ben Hayoun- Stépanian works with leading scientists and engineers, to devise subversive events and experiences. An advocate for plurality, she documents and builds platforms that support freedom of thinking, the creation of organised communities and public events, expeditions and projects with socio-political impacts.

She previously collaborated with Kid Cudi, The Avalanches, Beck, Bobby Womack, Sigur Ros, Damon Albarn, Maywa Denki, The Prodigy, Bruce Sterling and more in a musical collaboration that took music into space. In 2012 she established the International Space Orchestra – the world first orchestra of NASA scientists.

Nelly is a senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and she chairs international sessions with diplomats on the needs for the demilitarisation and decolonisation of outer space. Her artwork has flown in the International Space Station a few times and she leads cultural projects.

She is the founder of the tuition-free university University of the Underground, which includes board members and activists like Prof. Noam Chomsky, Pussy Riot and Prof. Arjun Appadurai. This tuition-free educative and cultural program is supporting plurality of thinking, free and transnational teaching and unconventional practices in the basement of nightclubs since 2017. Ben Hayoun- stépanian is the author of five feature documentary investigating topics such as the origins of knowledge and totalitarian regimes but also the next phase of humanity in space, her films work to platform diasporic and queer ecofeminist visions: THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE ORCHESTRA (2013), premiered at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. Their documentary DISASTER PLAYGROUND (2015) premiered at SXSW. Their documentary I AM (NOT) A MONSTER (2019) premiered at the London Film Festival and was nominated for a Grierson Award, featuring Noam Chomsky and Pussy Riot, it seeks to find the origins of knowledge, it is currently on NETFLIX EMEA. Their latest documentary is DOPPELGÄNGERS³ (2024), which was selected at the SXSW in the Vision category and commissioned by the Sundance Institute, Sandbox film grant, and the BFI Doc Society feature fund. Nelly is one of the the selected ‘world’s top 200 filmmakers’ selected over 3800 applications from 123 countries who joined Berlinale Talents in 2025.