10s Across the Borders: Celebrating Queer Life and Community
10s Across the Borders is a vibrant journey celebrating queer life, resilience, and community across Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Through the stories of trailblazers Teddy, Sun, and Xyza, the film explores how they built safe havens in societies that have often been hostile and unaccepting of queer lives.
The documentary pays tribute to the roots of ballroom culture, founded by Black and Latinx queer communities in New York. Drawing on these traditions, Teddy and Xyza brought ballroom back to Southeast Asia, adapting it to their local contexts and creating spaces where chosen families and communities could come together, thrive, and express themselves freely.
Directed by Singaporean filmmaker, choreographer, and activist Chan Sze-Wei, this collaborative journey between the filmmaker and protagonists unfolded over seven years, offering an intimate look into the heart of Southeast Asia’s ballroom communities.
About The Curator
Darunee Terdtoontaveedej is a curator and cultural programmer based in The Hague and has served as Artistic Director of the CinemAsia Film Festival in Amsterdam since 2024. With a background in architecture and design, their work explores the intersections of alternative (his)stories, creative assembly, and cinema.
They have programmed for festivals and institutions including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sinema Transtopia (Berlin), Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film (Singapore), and the Singapore International Film Festival. They have also served on juries for the Teddy Award at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and MIX Copenhagen.
Terdtoontaveedej co-founded and curated Non Native Native, a cultural platform examining the Asian creative landscape in the Netherlands, from 2018 to 2023. They also developed Queer Nongkrong, a collaborative space for queer diasporic communities at the CinemAsia Film Festival, until 2024, and served as a thesis advisor at Design Academy Eindhoven from 2023 to 2025.
