Berlin’s Teddy Awards have been celebrating queer films and artists since their inception 40 years ago, with past winners including Gus van Sant and Pedro Almodóvar. The initiative was not initially conceived as an award but rather a way of spotlighting LGBTQI+ films submitted across the festival. “For 10 years it was quite subcultural and we just organized it out of [Berlin strand] Panorama,” co-founder Wieland Speck says.
Within a few years, however, it had morphed into a bona fide awards event, complete with a cuddly teddy bear to take home (later replaced with a statue). The first award was handed out in 1987 to Almodóvar for Antonio Banderas-starrer
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