Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American director, producer, and writer who emerged as part of the "queer new wave" of young filmmakers in the 1990s. Dunye has made over fifteen films, including Mommy is Coming, The Owls, My Baby's Daddy, and HBO’s Stranger Inside, which garnered her an Independent Spirit award nomination for best director. Her feature film, The Watermelon Woman (1996), won the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival and was recently restored by Outfest’s UCLA Legacy Project for the film’s 20th anniversary. In 2015, Dunye’s multi-award-winning short film, "Black is Blue" (2014), was named one of the top five “Must See Feminist Films” by IndieWire.

She has directed many episodic series, including Ava Duvernay’s Queen Sugar, Dear White People, and Bridgerton. Her “Strange Case” episode of Lovecraft Country received a 52nd NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series and has been named one of the best episodes in 2020 by The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Tonight. More recently, she directed episodes for You and The Hunting Wives for Netflix.

In 2018, Dunye launched her Oakland-based production company called Jingletown Films, which is actively developing The Gilda Stories, an adaptation of the beloved 1991 queer vampire novel by Jewelle Gomez, and Black is Blue, the feature-length version of her award-winning short.