News - TEDDY AWARD - The Queer Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival

TEDDY TODAY: 16th of February 2026

Welcome to the fifth day of the Berlinale! February 16 brings another dynamic day of queer cinema, featuring exciting premieres, numerous reruns, and further screenings from the TEDDY 40 special programme. From bold new perspectives to enduring cinematic voices, today’s selections reflect the ongoing evolution and creative force of queer film.

Alongside the screenings, join us for the two-part Directors Exchange. In Directors Exchange: Cinematic Inheritance: Pioneers and Emerging Voices , we honour the filmmakers whose courage and imagination shaped queer cinema and spotlight a new generation building on those legacies. Directors Exchange: Standing in the Way of Control focuses on films that challenge dominant structures and confront racism, question genre conventions, and explore queer resistance within today’s cultural and political landscape.

Tickets for today’s screenings and events are available here .

Premieres

Whale 52 – Suite for Man, Boy, and Whale
Mon 16.02. 09:30 - Zoo Palast 1

Whale 52 – Suite for Man, Boy, and Whale

United States | Directed by Daniel Neiden

A quiet boy and a silently grieving widower who volunteers at the boy’s school discover a magical pen and journal that enable them to hear each other with a listening heart.

At The Sea
Mon 16.02 18:45 - Berlinale Palast

At the Sea

United States, Hungary | Directed by Kornél Mundruczó

After rehab, Laura returns to her family’s Cape Cod home. Once the face of her late father’s renowned dance company, she built an identity tethered to his legacy and the cost of growing up in his shadow. Laura’s functional alcoholism, long ignored by everybody, finally reached a breaking point after a drunk-driving accident with her young son in the car. Now sober, she comes home changed, but to a family unprepared for this.

Die Blutgräfin
Mon 16.02. 21:15 - Zoo Palast 1

Die Blutgräfin I The Blood Countess

Austria, Germany | Directed by Ulrike Ottinger

The Blood Countess and her maid embark on a quest for the red elixir of life and a book that threatens the vampire realm. Hot on their heels are a police inspector, two vampirologists, a vegetarian nephew and his therapist.

TEDDY 40 Retrospective Screenings

Kokomo City
Mon 16.02. 16:00 - Deutsche Kinemathek – Halle

Kokomo City

United States | Directed by D. Smith

Morning routines and conversations in bed, gossip and real talk. In encounters and interviews, D. Smith portrays four Black trans sex workers in New York and Georgia. The protagonists discuss their lives with relish but without any sugar-coating. The conversations that emerge are deep and passionate reflections on socio-political and social realities as well as perceptive analyses of belonging and identity within the Black community and beyond. D...

The Watermelon Woman
Mon 16.02. 22:00 - Zoo Palast 2

The Watermelon Woman

United States | Directed by Cheryl Dunye

In this riotous highlight of Black lesbian cinema, a young filmmaker researches the life of a forgotten Black bit player in old Hollywood movies. The film won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the 1996 Berlinale.