TEDDY Directors Exchange #1
Dummy
From trailblazing filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer and Cheryl Dunye to emerging voices like Brydie O'Connor, Sophie Heldman and Sanduela Asanda, we reflect on the legacies that have shaped today’s cinematic landscape. In an act of remembrance and a call to celebration, we look to those paths carved through resistance, imagination and courage and the paths we are still paving today.
Date: Monday, 16.02.26
Location: HUB75, Marlene-Dietrich-Platz 1, 10785, Berlin
Start: 10:00 Uhr
Free entry
Moderator:
Ana David
Programmer, Berlinale Panorama
Pronouns: she/her
Ana David is a festival programmer and curator working between Berlin and Portugal. She’s been an advisor to the official program of the Berlinale since 2024, a member of the advisory board at Berlinale Panorama since 2017, and a programmer at Márgenes - Festival Internacional de Cine de Madrid. Between 2021-2024 she was curator at Batalha Centro de Cinema (Porto), where she co-curated the thematic programmes ‘Politics of Sci-Fi’, ‘Domesticities’ and ‘After Hours: Clubbing on Film’. Previous programming positions include IndieLisboa, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Oslo/Fusion, BFI London Film Festival, and Queer Lisboa, the latter as co-director. She has organized retrospectives dedicated to Angelo Madsen Minax, Claire Denis, Joanna Hogg, Luísa Homem, Annemarie Jacir, Mai Zetterling, and Jane Campion.
Directors:
Sandulela Asanda
Director, Black Burns Fast, Generation
Pronouns: she/they
Sandulela Asanda (she/they) is a filmmaker from the Eastern Cape currently based in Cape Town South Africa. They have a background in Law and Economics. Asanda holds an Honours degree in film from AFDA Film School in Cape Town. Their student film, Nongqawuse, received critical review and was selected as the South African entry for the Escolas section of the BRICS film festival 2019. After graduating, Sandulela has worked in film festivals, training institutions, and production.
Her first professionally produced short, Mirror Mirror, recently had its world premiere in the Shortcuts Programme at TIFF 2022, and its European premiere at Berlinale Generations 2023. In the same year, the film won the award for Best South African Short at the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF). Her first feature, Black Burns Fast, made its debut at DIFF in 2025 and will now have its international premiere at the Berlinale in 2026 (also in Generation). Sandulela has most recently worked as a writer on Netflix’s Blood Legacy and is commercial director at OSU Creative Productions. She is an alumna of the Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmakers’ Academy, the Durban Film Mart and Realness African Screenwriter’s Residency.
Cheryl Dunye
Director, The Watermelon Woman, Retrospective
Pronouns: she/her
Cheryl Dunye emerged in the early 1990s “Queer New Wave.” Her debut feature, THE WATERMELON WOMAN, won the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. She has made over 15 films, including HBO’s STRANGER INSIDE, and directs prestige television such as LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, where her episode earned an NAACP Image Award nomination.
Sophie Heldman
Director, The Education of Jane Cumming, Panorama
Pronouns: she/her
Writer and director Sophie Heldman was born in Hamburg and grew up in Switzerland. She started out working on independent film productions in New York and then went on to study directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB).
Satte Farben vor Schwarz (Colors in the Dark), starring Bruno Ganz and Senta Berger, was her feature film debut. It premiered in competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and was a success at the German and Swiss box office.
The Education of Jane Cumming is her second feature film.
Brydie O'Connor
Director, Barbara Forever, Forum
Pronouns: she/her
Brydie O’Connor is a New York based filmmaker. Her work activates archives through queering storytelling structures within the nonfiction space. Brydie’s work has been supported by Creative Capital, Cinéma du Réel, Hot Docs, Frameline, and the Stonewall Foundation, and has been presented at The Museum of Modern Art, BFI, & DOC NYC, among other festivals and galleries worldwide. Her debut feature documentary, BARBARA FOREVER, is premiering in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival with a subsequent international premiere at the 2026 Berlinale.
Most recently, Brydie was selected as the recipient of the Creative Capital State of the Art Prize for New York (2026), the Hulu/Kartemquin Accelerator (2023), and she was an inaugural fellow in the UFO Film Lab (2023-2024). She is a graduate of The George Washington University, and has developed her work at the Provincetown Film Society LGBTQ+ Filmmakers Residency (2024) and the On:View Residency (2024) in Savannah, GA.