Tamara Stepanyan was born in Armenia. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, she moved with her parents to Lebanon in 1994, when the country was emerging from civil war. After studying and working in Lebanon, she recently moved to France, where she began writing her first feature-length fiction screenplay. In 2005 she graduated from the Lebanese American University (LAU), where she studied communication arts with a specialization in radio, television and film. Stepanyan made a number of films while still at university, including "Needle" (2004) and "The Last Station" (2005), and participated in film workshops in South Korea, the Asian Film Academy at the Busan International Film Festival in 2007, and in Denmark, in an exchange program at the Danish National School of Cinematography in 2012.

In 2007 she went to Sudan and made a 30-episode documentary for television about Sudanese culture, food and traditions. Among her works is "My Beirut", a video, photo and audio installation that was part of Badguer I in 2009. The short documentary "Little Stones" and the short fiction film "February 19" received the award for best fiction film at the Lebanese Film Festival. "Embers" is Stepanyan's latest film, which recently received the award for best documentary at the Busan International Film Festival.