Film Forum

Brydie O’Connor is a filmmaker from Kansas living in New York. Her work has been presented at Sundance, Berlinale, Full Frame, Hot Docs, Le Centre Pompidou, BFI, and The Museum of Modern Art, among other festivals and galleries worldwide. Her debut feature documentary, BARBARA FOREVER (2026), was awarded the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, the TEDDY Award for Best Documentary at the Berlinale, and is an honoree at the Maysles Documentary Center Abie Awards. In 2026, Brydie received the Creative Capital State of the Art Prize for New York, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 64th Ann Arbor Film Festival, and a Special Mention for the John Schlesinger Documentary Award for a first-time filmmaker at the Provincetown International Film Festival. She also works professionally as an archivist on documentaries, art films, video essays, and installations.

Matt Wolf’s recent two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself about the artist and performer Paul Reubens won numerous awards, including an Independent Spirit, Peabody, and 3 Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Editing, Best Director, and Best Documentary. His other feature documentaries include WILD COMBINATION about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, TEENAGE about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, RECORDER about the activist Marion Stokes, who secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years, and SPACESHIP EARTH about Biosphere 2, a controversial experiment where 8 people lived quarantined inside a replica of the planet. Matt has made a number of short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, HBO’s It’s Me, Hilary about the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight, I Remember about the artist Joe Brainard, The Face of AIDS about a notorious 1992 Benetton advertisement, and Another Hayride about the self-help guru Louise Hay. Matt is currently writing Trust Me, a book about the relationship between documentary filmmakers and their subjects for Bloomsbury.

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