Power Shot

French-Canadian director of photography Jessica Lee Gagné hadn't planned on working in the U.S. until she'd made more of a name for herself. Then Ben Stiller came calling.

Or rather, Skyping. Gagné had just landed in Paris, having rented an apartment for a month as a first step to relocation, when she received an email from her agent.

Stiller was going to direct and executive-produce the Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora, about a true-life prison break in upstate New York. He'd seen her work in the dark indie drama Sweet Virginia and was interested in hiring her. After meeting Stiller on Skype, then at Cannes, she got the job.

The look of the show, which stars Benicio Del Toro, Paul Dano and Patricia Arquette, "was driven by '70s New York filmmakers," Gagné says. Born in Quebec City, where her father owned video rental stores, she grew up watching films at home. "We made the images very dirty, underexposed," she says of Escape. "We never tried to make it too bright."

Gagné worked for her dad early on and received her first camera at age nine, but she didn't consider making cinematography a career till she was in college in Montreal, where she studied photography and film.

Since then, she's worked on projects including music videos, movies, a New York City Ballet promo and Cannes nominee Sarah Prefers to Run — not just in Canada but in India, Nepal, Japan, Malta and elsewhere. "I love traveling," she says, "and the cultures."

Once she gets a job, "I dive into imagery, scavenging for images to show the director," Gagné says.

She has two favorite photo-oriented bookshops, one in Paris and one in New York, and also finds inspiration in paintings and theater. On set, she adds, "I'm tough. I don't smile a lot. People have told me, 'You should be more friendly.' I'm trying to learn: is it my attitude that needs to be in check, or do they need to change?"

Indeed, Gagné says she was not fazed by being a female cinematographer when she started out, because women count for about a third of the cinematographers in Montreal.

There was another, broader influence as well: "French-Canadian filmmakers are amazing," she says. "There's something about the fight for the French language that makes French-Canadians really powerful."

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 3, 2019