Biography:

Ghanaian German director and scriptwriter Brenda Akele Jorde was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1993.

She studied Media Studies at the Fachhochschule Potsdam. Her final project was the 2018 documentary Va-Bene (crazinisT artist), about the Ghanaian performance artist and activist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi. The short was screened at festivals around the world. From 2018 until 2022, she studied Documentary Film Directing at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. As a film student, Jorde wrote and directed A Way of Breathing (2020), a portrait of an Afghan woman living in Tehran, and Stick of Joy (2020), about the pleasure of pain, playfulness and trust between two people. The Homes We Carry (2022) is her feature-length documentary debut and her master’s film project at the university. The documentary, also co-written by Jorde, about a young Afro-German single mother whose father was a Mozambican contract worker in East Germany, was premiered at 2023 DOK Leipzig. The film won her many international awards and put her on the list of important German documentary filmmakers.

In 2023, Jorde directed the seven episodes of season one of RTL+ reality television series, Family of Choice, about ballroom culture in Germany and its international influence.

Brenda Akele Jorde’s films so far deal with self-empowerment through art, issues of identity, queerness and the effects of migration for the individual.

Brenda Akele Jorde curated and moderated KUKI, the children’s documentary section of the Berlin Interfilm International Short Film Festival. Since 2021, she has co-curated the documentary program of the same festival. She also works as a circus pedagogue at social institutions and teaches acro yoga.