For over twenty years, Stéphane Batut worked as a Casting director for prestigious filmmakers such as Mathieu Amalric, Sharunas Bartas, Xavier Beauvois, Serge Bozon, Thomas Cailley, Laurent Cantet, Claire Denis, Arnaud Desplechin, Nicole Garcia, Alain Guiraudie, Cédric Kahn, the Larrieu brothers, Noémie Lvovsky, Jean-Marc Moutout, Jacques Nolot, Bruno Podalydès, Axelle Ropert, Riad Sattouf, Claire Simon, Joann Sfar, Frédéric Videau, Nadav Lapid, Paul Verhoeven…

He worked for four years at the film department of University Paris VIII under director Jean-Henri Roger and film critic Philippe Arnaud who helped him directing his first short films.

Strangely, after meeting so many actors, he decided fifteen years later, to direct documentaries : Le chœur in 2007 and Le rappel des oiseaux in 2014. He probably "learned by working with some filmmakers that fiction and documentary nurtured each other", and is "eager to see the emergence of a story, the myth of a fortuitous encounter, as well as finding the liberty and the unexpected in fictional writing".

Vif-argent is his first narrative feature-length film.