--- name: "Arkasha Stevenson" canonical: "https://film.one/person/arkasha-stevenson" fi1m_id: "arkasha-stevenson" imdb_id: "nm6674331" tmdb_id: 1706480 wikidata_id: "Q118309606" roles: ["Director"] reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 74 average_as: "director" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-17T14:35:34.994050+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Arkasha Stevenson ## Identity Arkasha Stevenson - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/arkasha-stevenson - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** arkasha-stevenson - **IMDb ID:** nm6674331 - **TMDB ID:** 1706480 - **Wikidata ID:** Q118309606 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkasha_Stevenson, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q118309606, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6674331/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1706480 Director. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Active:** 2017–present - **Also known as:** アルカシャ・スティーブンソン, Аркаша Стівенсон - **Average Fi1m score:** 74, as director, over 2 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 77 (1), 2020s 72 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkasha_Stevenson, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q118309606, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6674331/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1706480 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*Legion*](https://film.one/tv/legion.md) (77) - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The First Omen*](https://film.one/film/the-first-omen.md) (72) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Arkasha Stevenson > Arkasha Stevenson makes horror out of what institutions do to women's bodies, and she holds the shot where most directors would cut. One feature in, she can frighten. Whether she can end a film as well as she begins one is not yet settled. About an hour into *The First Omen* (2024) there is a delivery room, and Arkasha Stevenson does the thing that tells you what kind of director she is. Where most horror would cut fast and let the blood do the work, she chooses one angle and stays on it, and the women standing round the bed do not flinch. Bob Murawski and Amy E. Duddleston, who cut the rest of the film briskly, hold. We put our tea down and did not pick it up again for some minutes, and it was the calm in that room, not what was on the sheets, that did it. She came to this by an unusual road. Stevenson was a photojournalist at the Los Angeles Times before she went to the AFI Conservatory to learn to direct, and you can see the reporter in the way her camera begins each scene by not calling attention to itself. Her thesis short, *Vessels* (2015), was about black-market medical procedures in the transgender community; the interest in what is done to bodies, and who gets to decide, was there from the start. Then came television: the whole third season of *Channel Zero* (2018), episodes of *Legion* (2019) and *Briarpatch* (2020). That is a lot of practice at working inside somebody else's design. *The First Omen* is a prequel to Richard Donner's *The Omen* (1976), and for eighty of its 119 minutes it is her film. With the cinematographer Aaron Morton she shoots Rome in the browns and burnt oranges of an old photograph, daylight coming through high windows in slabs; Eve Stewart's orphanage is iron beds and locked rooms nobody explains; Paco Delgado cuts the habits so close that a group of nuns is only eyes. The camera stays quiet while Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) is still a novice with a roommate and a city outside, and it grows stranger as the film does. Stevenson has said that she and her writing partner Tim Smith "didn’t shy away from those thematics of forced reproduction and loss of female body autonomy", and for once a director's account of her own film is accurate. Then the plot has to arrive at 1976, and it stops being hers. The last half hour is a checklist: explanations in full sentences, a famous name spoken, a shot from the original reproduced so exactly it plays as a bow. Stevenson has also said a prequel is only worth making if you have something new to say to the original, and she did; the franchise took the last reel back anyway. We relaxed in the final twenty minutes, which a horror film should never allow. Her next film, written with Smith, has no 1976 waiting at the end of it. We would like to see what she does with a story that owes nobody anything. ## Biography Arkasha Stevenson is an American filmmaker and former photojournalist. She worked as a photojournalist and videographer for the *Los Angeles Times* before attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduating from the directing programme at the American Film Institute. Her short film *Vessels* (2015) won the Iris Prize. With writing partner Tim Smith she made the short *Pineapple* (2017). She has directed episodes of the television series *Channel Zero* (2018), *Legion* (2019), *Briarpatch* (2020) and *Brand New Cherry Flavor* (2021). Stevenson made her feature directorial debut with the 2024 horror film *The First Omen*, which she also co-wrote with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas. *Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, deadline.com, bloody-disgusting.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *The First Omen* (2024), Fi1m 72, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-first-omen.md) - *Legion* (2017), Fi1m 77, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/legion.md) ## Complete filmography (15) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The First Omen* (2024), Screenplay, Director — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/film/the-first-omen.md) - *Brand New Cherry Flavor* (2021), series, Director, Co-Executive Producer - *Briarpatch* (2020), series, Director - *All About Nina* (2018), Thanks - *Bad Match* (2017), Still Photographer - *Daisy & D* (2017), Writer, Director - *Pineapple* (2017), series, Director, Writer, Editor, Creator - *Legion* (2017), series, Director — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/tv/legion.md) - *Pineapple* (2017), Writer, Director, Editor - *Channel Zero* (2016), series, Director, Co-Executive Producer - *Vessels* (2015), Writer, Director - *Hungry Horse: Legends of the Everyday* (2014), Editor - *Crowns* (2014), Director, Writer - *Safekeeping* (2010), Director, Producer, Editor - *Untitled A24 Horror Film*, Director, Screenplay --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/arkasha-stevenson