Courtney Stephens is the director of four feature films and many shorts.The American Sector (with Pacho Velez) follows slabs of the Berlin Wall installed around the US, and was named one of the best films of 2021 in The New Yorker. Terra Femme, composed of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and has toured widely as a live performance. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (with Michael Almereyda) explores the life of psychedelics pioneer John C. Lilly, and her most recent film Invention (2024) is an experimental narrative about an esoteric healing device. Her films have been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Walker Art Center, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Locarno, Rotterdam, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, IDFA, Visions Du Réel, Thessaloniki, BAFICI, True/False, Hot Docs, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and the New York Film Festival. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and grants from the Sloan Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.

She has co-curated the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, and organized film programs for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Flaherty NYC, and Human Resources. Her writing has appeared in Film Comment, BOMB, Filmmaker, The New Inquiry, and Cabinet.