Of Teddy Bears, Oral Histories and Warm and Welcoming Spaces: A Panoramic Interview with Michael Stütz during the 76th Berlinale

February 2026 marked the 40th anniversary of the Berlinale’s venerable queer film prize, the Teddy Award. With this milestone in mind, I was invited by the prize’s organisers, the Teddy Foundation, to interview Michael Stütz while attending this year’s Berlinale. Stütz sits on the board of directors of the Teddy Foundation; moreover, he has led the Berlinale’s Panorama section (“always looking for what is new, daring, unconventional and wild in today’s cinema”¹) since June 2019, and has been connected to it for much longer. You could say that Stütz embodies the longstanding ties between the Teddy Award and the Panorama, ties which the following interview aims to illuminate.

Moreover, Stütz was promoted by Tricia Tuttle, upon her assumption in 2024 of the role of Director of the Berlinale, to Co-Director of Film Programming alongside Jacqueline Lyanga, while retaining his role at the head of the Panorama. Has the selection of films vying for a queer film prize ever before been linked to someone so ensconced in the uppermost programming echelons of an A-list festival? I would wager not.

This interview is a contribution I was only too happy to make to a documentation process under way to capture and preserve oral accounts of the Teddy’s history, at a time when the rise of the far-right in Germany has queer folk in Berlin appreciably anxious that the anything-goes freedoms they’ve so long enjoyed might be curtailed, as in dark times of yesteryear that scarcely need elucidating. (Similarly, I was delighted and honoured to be asked by Panorama Programme Manager Bartholomew Sammut, as a previous Teddy juror and “Teddy Talk” participant in 2024, to participate in a Teddy panel discussion this year as well, to publicly present and record something of my own perspectives and Teddy recollections.²)

While artistic directors of festivals not uncommonly face the media – if seldom to speak in-depth about the mechanics of their work and their role’s relationships to those of their colleagues – it is rarer that a festival programmer be interviewed substantively by a journal of record, notwithstanding their clear centrality to the all-important selection and contextualisation of films at any given festival.

This interview was conducted on a very chilly Monday, 16 February 2026, against a backdrop of snowballing fallout from Wim Wenders’ famously gormless Jury President statements at the opening press conference (“We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics”, and so on³), occasioning a flurry of open letters alternately hoping to clarify, and antagonistic to, the Berlinale’s positionality, with especial respect to the festival’s ongoing discomfort around acknowledging Israel’s superabundantly well-documented genocidal activities in Palestine.

This created considerable background noise for festival staff and attendees alike to negotiate. Stütz, with his trademark equanimity, was happy nonetheless to grant me an unhurried half-hour-long interview, ultimately held in his Potsdamer Platz office.

Some of what follows has taken on extra resonance in light of the threat posed to the Berlinale’s independence, and to Tricia Tuttle’s role at the head of it, by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, Wolfram Weimer, who peremptorily called an emergency meeting of the management of cultural supervisory body Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (KBB; its chair, one Wolfram Weimer) in the immediate wake of this year’s festival, in (manufactured, convenient?) outrage at the festival’s putative platforming of people voicing (cough, cough) antisemitic sentiments.

Weimer’s efforts to topple Tuttle met with wholly unified, publicised resistance from the festival staff, Stütz included, and from peers of comparable seniority to her across the festival circuit, defusing the threat to her continued occupation of the Director’s role, and indeed to the festival’s prospects of operating without direct political interference… for now, at least.

While this interview’s principal focus is on the Teddy’s 40th anniversary, and on storying Stütz’s rise and rise within the ranks of Berlinale staffers in parallel to the Teddy’s growing esteem and prestige, the turbulence enveloping the festival couldn’t help but seep into the interview, which I’ll note has been edited for brevity and clarity.

***

Jacqueline Lyanga, Michael Stütz and Tricia Tuttle © Richard Hübner, Berlinale 2026

Let’s get a little bit of background, to begin with. It would be lovely to hear firstly about how the Teddy and Panorama relate to one another now, and how they have previously, in your time and, to the best of your knowledge, beforehand. So: the history.

The history. I’ll start at the very beginning.

Yes please.

Panorama was founded in the festival in 1980. Panorama was back then called “Info-Schau” and the late Manfred Salzgeber was asked to take over Panorama, which he did. He was a founding member of the Forum in ‘71, then left Berlin, but came back for that job. He started to champion feminist cinema very strongly but also what we call now queer cinema – which was, back then, more lesbian and gay cinema – to embrace it, to include it in the program. He also started to meet up with programmers who were starting festivals around the world – LGBTQ+ festivals and queer festivals. They had sessions outside of the festival at night in the bookshop Prinz Eisenherz – the gay bookshop – and discussed films.

They showed other films, that were not in the festival, that they felt were important to discuss. I think a mindset was started already in the early ‘80s; the films followed in the coming years. Wieland Speck joined in ’82; he worked closely with Manfred, and they were very aware that there was an audience out there in the city that they could rely on and they could build up, for an interest in queer cinema, because they were both running cinemas in the city, so they both had great experience when it comes to that.

They knew the audience would be the first step, and the audience was built up in the first years; the interest was there. Wieland, a filmmaker himself, made the film Westler [(1985)], which screened around the world and won many awards, and Wieland realised this attention creates an acknowledgement with the press that helps with visibility and breaking new ground, when it comes to a narrative that is out there that can cross over.

So he and Manfred decided in 1987 to give this little teddy out which was, back then, a little stuffed white bear that Wieland bought, I think, in a gas station or something, and they invited everybody who was here from the industry, who was interested. They met up in a bookshop, and everybody wrote down their favourite film, and then the teddies were awarded to Gus Van Sant and Pedro Almodóvar. And so it started. Then, in the following years, they went into other spaces where they celebrated, where they had a little award show, and it grew from a subcultural event to a very sought-after place to be to celebrate queer cinema.

The festival in 1992 acknowledged the prize as an official independent award of the festival – so, very early on. Moritz de Hadeln, the [Berlinale] director back then, was an important ally; that, of course, didn’t so much happen at that time. New Queer Cinema came along; queer film festivals proliferated around the world, so all these things came together, but of course [the Teddy] was always organised outside of the Panorama. It was born there, but it was organised outside of there.

A lot of colleagues over the years have supported it with extra work, with dedication, with an activist heart behind it, so it’s important to mention that, and thank everybody who ever contributed to it. Over the years, film festivals and the circuit [became] more professionalised. When Wieland took over Panorama in ’94, after Manfred passed away, there were structures established in the festival to support the work that everybody was already doing, and that grew over time.

The other sections in the festival of course noticed that; the Forum was also always very at the forefront with queer cinema. Over the decades [the Teddy] really inscribed itself into the DNA of the festival, in terms of curating a program from the films that were brought to the festival for selection.

I started 21 years ago. The programmers’ meeting, where the programmers come together, was already a tradition by then, so we continued that, but over the years [the Teddy] established more connections within the festival, with the [European Film] Market, and in curating talks every year and meetings at the market, and so on. I think that it’s really important that both of these kinds of things come together very well.

Teddy Award Ceremony 2026 – Tricia Tuttle and Michael Stütz

Can you talk about how the Teddy Foundation and the Panorama programming relate to one another – does one inform or influence the other? I understand that there are a few Panorama staff members who are also Teddy board members, so is the Teddy Foundation a truly independent entity?

Yeah, the Teddy Foundation is a truly independent identity. I’m one of the board members, so that of course relates always very strongly. It was the idea that they built up, of course, which is wonderful, but you have to rely on the support of the festival, which so far has been great, especially under Tricia now as well, so there is of course a link.

There’s a link, but the independence is important to mention, even though we’re a part of the festival. The festival is a cooperation partner of the Teddy, but the independence is important. You never know. You never know, especially now, in times that are politically very challenging and threatening, and that’s why independence is important, in case there might be at some point not much support.

I attended a Teddy Talk just a few days ago where Wieland Speck was one of the speakers, and Bart Sammut was moderating, and there was quite a bit of discussion about the importance, not just of this milestone – 40 years – but of documenting the 40 years and having oral histories, having all manner of other archival materials disseminated into the world, not just so that people understand the story, but also as a buttress against powers that might try to re-marginalise queer voices here.⁴ Do you see this as being a genuinely threatening time in Berlin and surrounds for queer culture and queer film culture?

Yes. I would say generally, yes. I think we have to be alert and we have to be aware of it, and we have to talk about it and support each other and stand in solidarity. That’s absolutely true because I think spaces are narrowing around the world globally.

It’s not just here; I think it’s something that we have to think [about] on a bigger level, and for that reason it is extremely important, as you just mentioned, to archive and to [obtain] oral history – for instance, what we do with the Teddy 40 talks, bringing together people who are so instrumental to this all and who did so much. 

Yes, so the documentary part is extremely important, and oral history, and bringing all these materials together, because we know that the heritage many times, from generation to generation, was often lost, especially with marginalised voices, and so that is an important task that we have to do and focus on more in the future.

I’ve long been struck that film festivals themselves are a largely under-documented phenomenon, for something so central in the ecology of film culture.

That’s true.

And then, within that, to have a queer film prize running for 40 years – such prizes are very under-documented as well, and there are all sorts of reasons for that beyond institutional disinterest, let’s say, or wider cultural disinterest in funding and promoting these things, and with the precarity of these organisations…

Funding is definitely an issue here, since a couple of years. There have been painful cuts in culture and of course many queer institutions and many queer cultural spaces have been under threat, and some had to close, like SchwuZ for instance, after 48 years – they’re now working on reopening in a smaller space. Sometimes you have to come up with new tactics because it’s not the same as it was ten, 15 years ago, for clubs as well – and [SchwuZ] is a social space but also a club space, so you might have to focus on a more intimate space again, to be able to economically run it as well, but not give up in total, and I think the people always try to come up with new ideas and attacks and it’s great to see, absolutely, and I guess Berlin always had this spirit there.

With the documenting part with the Teddy, we’ve been, as you know, doing interviews with jury members and all the filmmakers that are here – that has been going on for 20 years. That’s wonderful, so there’s a large, large, large archive when it comes to content. And screening within the festival, we have all these interviews. Some of the film teams are using [the content] afterwards; sometimes it goes up with releasing the film. But of course, there’s so much more to do, to connect the network that – it’s a loose network, obviously –that comes together here, and there was always a big idea to somehow bring that together, and form this network in a bit more firm way, because there’s so much we could do more. But it is always coming down, of course, to financial support, because nowadays nobody can afford to work for nothing anymore, and shouldn’t – absolutely not!

So there has been a long history of volunteerism involved with the Teddy Foundation’s activities – it’s a passion project?

When it comes to the organisation of the event, within a year, it’s great that we have the structure of the festival, that [the festival’s] doing a lot for the Teddy and for [its] content – it’s coming organically out of what we do, in general, for the festival. Of course, [the Teddy’s] always depending on the support of [volunteers], but we’re trying to keep it as minimised as possible, because it’s important for people to get paid. They bring their expertise, and their points of view, and life experience – that is so valuable

And if you pay them, it’s easier to keep them, of course.

Yeah, and it’s fair. Period.

It’s fair, but it’s also not always possible.

It’s not always possible.

Do you think there’s a possible documentary feature film outcome of this project?

There could be… 

Do you know of one, that you’re…

No, I don’t. It may be a good idea – we should start something…

Well, with all of that archive, as you say…

There’s a lot there, there’s definitely a lot there… Now we have the 40th – maybe in ten years, or for the 50th anniversary of Panorama, which is in 2029; that’s only three years away. I’m starting to get nervous when I think about it, because we need to do something big, and as the Teddy is still such a big part of what we do, maybe something like this could be done. Let’s see.

Of course, Teddy-eligible films span other parts of the program.

That, I think, is really wonderful. [The Teddy] was never conceived as something ghettoised within one programme, even though Panorama traditionally had, and still has, the most queer films, which is great; I’m happy that we have 30 to 40 percent each year of the program. [The Teddy] has inscribed itself so much into the curatorial identity of the festival and, because of the market structures that have been here, there’s such special attention and a special sort of possibility of multiplicating here, that many productions, luckily, submit their films here. It’s great because, in terms of content and cinematic approaches and aesthetic visions and narratives, there’s such a wide range of films, from Competition to Panorama, and then you have Forum and Forum Expanded, which go really into the experimental, beyond-the-traditional cinema space. So that is really, really wonderful and I think that is something very, very special that was built and established and nurtured.

Let’s talk about the Teddy ceremony itself which is, of course, the main event. It’s a grand party, a much-anticipated occasion each year. How much does the festival have input into that event – is there any, or is it entirely up to the Teddy Foundation…

[The Teddy] has producers who produce the whole thing, but we’re in very close exchange and contact all the time, so we do work together on this but, in the end, it’s [the Teddy team] who bring it all up and materialise it. But yeah, there’s some exchange, and there’s some creative input from [the festival’s] side as well.

Does the broader Berlinale wish to have much input into that – are you much scrutinised or do you have, do you feel, a free hand?

No, that is very free. Of course, there’s communication; there’s exchange. Tricia is interested with what’s going on and how we’re going to do things, but she’s not interfering, in that sense, and I think there’s just an organic and healthy flow with what we’re doing.

I attended the ceremony last year and Tricia gave a lovely speech and instantly acknowledged her own queer identity, which I hadn’t given thought to prior to that point, and I thought it was rather delightful that she was fangirling out over Todd Haynes.

(Laughs)

Have there been – I don’t know, if it’s quite right to ask this, whether there’ve been previous queer directors of the Berlinale, or directors who’ve had that sort of relationship with queer cinema?

Not as strongly, no, not as strongly as Tricia, who used to run BFI London but also Flare,⁵ so there’s so much coming from her side, so much knowledge and expertise and lived experience. So not in that capacity, no. But I must say every director was always positive and supportive, and I think they all realised, or knew when they started, like Carlo [Chatrian], for instance, that [the Teddy] was something that was very special about the festival, that it was not just for the queer community, but for the entire film industry. It’s very clear that this is something that elevates the festival on all levels, because queer cinema is part of the entire programming structure. It’s not in a ghetto; it really means a lot and everybody knows that.

There are a lot of queer staff members across the festival…

There are a lot of queer staff members – that also draws the interest of people. I came [to the Berlinale] because of that, because I knew about the Teddy; I knew about the Teddy in Austria.

Let’s duck back in time then. How were you drawn to the festival – did you put your hat in the ring for a vacancy that was going at the time?

For an internship, yes. I just wrote to the Teddy – the internship was for the Teddy – but that’s how I got to know Wieland; I was also in touch with Panorama people. It was in 2005. I had just moved to Berlin and I’d studied a little bit and my intention was like, let’s check it out for a year, like everybody did back then, because it was so cheap and easy. I came from university – I studied film and theatre and media studies in Vienna – and I was always drawn to that idea of festival work, even though I didn’t know festivals very well at the time at all. I went to the Viennale, but I didn’t know anything else apart from that.

Having grown up in the countryside in Austria in the early ‘90s, when I was 15 or so, there was not much to relate to, so as we all did, I dug through everything – German television was pretty good back then; there was a lot of Fassbinder, and things to see. You could discover some things, but you also had to do your own kind of queer readings and create your own alternate sort of creative universe. I think from there came the urge to look outside, into the world, to be led into different kinds of experiences, and I was always fascinated by them. That helped me a lot as a teenager.

You went from Teddy into the Panorama team and became a staffer…

Yeah, exactly; Wieland offered me a job as his assistant [one] year afterwards and that’s how it all started. I worked closely with Wieland for many years, was then given a chance to start working more with the Teddy, in terms of content about queer films and everything that we organised within the festival; that was my role for a long time. I started to travel at some point, and one thing came to another, I’m part of the programming staff, and then Wieland handed it over at some point, and Carlo asked me to run it by myself when Carlo started.

I’m on a Teddy talk this Thursday about embedding queer identities in film industry structures. Do you want to project forward a little yourself how you’d like to see queer cinema evolve, not just on screen, but industrially – do you have a dream… is the dream greater assimilation, or do we still need queer disruption…?

I think we should assimilate, like, a hundred percent, honestly. I think it’s very vivid here in the program – we have a wide range of films, so I think it’s always good to champion films that have the potential of reaching a larger audience. We’re a huge public audience film festival. But at the same time, we also need to champion radical voices, and I think that’s still very present in the festival, and I think that’s part of the identity of the festival in general, and of the approach to how we curate and see films and the voices that we want to champion. I would like to see that continue after me – of course, that depends on a lot of factors.

In terms of industry, what I can only hope is that the work that we do helps the films, to use the platform to have this possibility of, not just going to festivals but maybe, in some cases at least, [to] get a distribution deal, so that the cultural value can transform at some point and enable the filmmakers to make more films. That’s really the goal here, which is difficult, which has been difficult for not just a few years, but we know that the distribution network for most films are the festivals where, of course, not a very big economical revenue is coming back to them; it’s only [working better] for those ones who are part of healthy funding structures. That’s not everywhere the case and often not so supported. It depends on so many factors.

The other way in which you get to platform filmmakers is to give them an opportunity to get on the mic, where queers are famously disruptive and create havoc and speak rather more openly than I think a lot of other people are comfortable doing at this festival. How do you feel about the tensions – the very evident tensions – within the broader Berlinale community around speaking out about Palestine especially; that’s obviously the hot button topic. 

In Germany, yes.

Will it ever be thus – do you foresee that there’ll always be this frisson between the festival, the broader culture, visitors to the festival, filmmakers – there’re a lot of dynamics there. Are you comfortable speaking to that?

I think it depends from which angle you’re looking at that. Of course, there’s friction, and this is culturally a particularly sensitive topic, which you can acknowledge or not; it’s everybody’s right. In the end, for us, it’s important that, if there’s discussion, if there’s critical discourse, which we welcome, that it happens with respect. That’s most important – that’s what we’re trying to facilitate in the cinemas. And I think it works, to be honest, and there’s a lot of narratives in the festival throughout the entire program that champion voices and that acknowledge the simple fact of equal rights and humanitarian equality, and the suffering that is happening there, but also in so many other places in the world, and we’ve had just yesterday a wonderful premiere where people were really having a great, emotional exchange, and a political exchange,⁶ so I think these things are happening.

I know that there are counter-narratives also and I know that there’s different kinds of opinions, and I know that there’s a lot of questions around how the festival handles things, and there’s some things that are not real facts, to be honest, sometimes, that are out there, which is fine; this is part of drawing attention to something, so I do understand that and I would never speak against that. We’re trying to do our best to facilitate these spaces for everybody to be able to speak up freely.

Is there pressure brought to bear on the Teddy Foundation, on you, on Panorama, about the documentation of events? Live streams have had a habit of disappearing; I don’t think the last two Teddy ceremonies’ videos are online anymore. Last year’s was online for quite a while⁷ and then disappeared; the one which I was involved in two years ago I don’t think went online for long at all, if at all⁸ – I can’t recall. Is there pressure to sequester that difficult material?

(Surprised) I’m not responsible for putting these things online; this is sort of not my job at that time, but I thought they’re all online?

I don’t think they are. I’m presuming it’s because people [at those ceremonies] have acknowledged genocidal activity in Gaza. And I know there’s certain phraseology in this country…

…that’s sensitive…

Very sensitive.

But I think people have spoken out a lot about genocide this year. I think it’s part of discussions, very vitally. And that’s very good.

I’m sure it will come up again on Friday at the ceremony too.

Could be, yes, of course.

You’ll be there?

Yes.

Other key members of the Berlinale inner circle – Tricia will be there, I imagine?

Tricia will be there, yes.

I don’t know if there’s anything you can talk about that’ll happen on Friday – anything special to acknowledge the number 40, that you’re especially proud of or thrilled about?

Wieland will be on stage and bringing his perspective, his historical perspective, and [will] talk about that; Tricia will be there. Céline Sciamma will receive the Special Teddy Award, so we’re very much looking forward to that. It’s super exciting – we all love her work, which is so important, and she’s also such a wonderful champion of cinema and such a great cinephile. She’s bringing forward Chantal Akerman’s work wherever she can, for instance, so she’s getting this [award] really for all of this, and for being a courageous artist on top.

There will be some performances. It will be the same length; we’re keeping it at 90 minutes. There will be a look back, obviously, but there will be a very strong focus again on the films this year, which is always the most important part, and this gets the biggest space. And there will be a big party, which is also great because the visibility of that is also important. 

Last year it felt very significant that Rosa von Praunheim was there to accept an award and, of course, Rosa’s no longer with us. Do you think his spirit will somehow permeate the occasion?

I hope so – I mean, we have in the Teddy 40 anniversary programme a film from Rosa, Tunten lügen nicht [(Queens Don’t Cry, 2002)], and we were in touch with Rosa about it and he was very happy, and we were looking forward to presenting it and then, not long after, unfortunately, he passed on. It’s screening this Thursday and I hope a lot of people will come to celebrate and think about Rosa and his wonderful, wonderful, huge legacy.

Queens Don’t Cry © Rosa von Praunheim missingFILMs

And an extraordinary flair for mischief.

Oh yeah, total mischief, yeah.

We’ll wrap this up in a minute. I’ll just ask quickly first: I know there’s a talk on Wednesday about a Queer Film Archive at the Kinemathek.⁹ Is there Teddy material that the Kinemathek will become custodians of, or is this other material that they have?

They will have an exhibition that will open in the spring, I think, and these are [of] several archives partly from Manfred Salzgeber, that they have taken on now, so they will have a big exhibition on queer cinema, which is great. With the Teddy stuff, we’re in a good exchange with them now because of this, and we know many people who organise this exhibition, so I think there’s a good chance, and the Kinemathek is taking more and more on this role and archiving queer filmmakers also. They have been doing this for a while. 

Wonderful. Are there any final words you’d like to have documented, or a pull quote you’d like me to grab – is there anything in particular you feel that’s essential that I and Senses of Cinema readers know or feel… Is 40 just the beginning?

Of course! 40’s young. 40’s young for me, too. No, I don’t know, I have no quotes. 

Do you anticipate continuing with the roles you’re in presently, for…

Yes, for now, yes. We’ll see, we’ll see how long. You never know. 

You love what you do, right?

Of course I love what I do! I mean, it takes a lot of time from one’s life and you have to fully identify with it, otherwise… My boyfriend always says he doesn’t know anyone who identifies with their work as much as I do, which he doesn’t mean in a positive way, but I see it in a good way. (Laughs)

Lastly, do you feel that the climate here is homophobic – what do you think of February festivaling for being festive, for being a festive queer? I struggle, but then I’m not from ‘round here.

(Laughs) No, no, no, no. When it comes to climate, I wouldn’t say so. There are many warm and welcoming spaces.

That’s a nice final takeaway; thank you. Many nice and warm, welcoming spaces. Thanks so much. 

Thank you.

Endnotes