Ana Cristina Carvalho Rodrigues, que nas artes assina como Danddara, nasceu no Rio de Janeiro em 1968, cresceu no universo cultural do samba. É cineasta, escritora, cantora e artista florestal premiada no Brasil e nos EUA. Licenciou-se em História pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

This Brazilian Filmmaker and Writer was born in 1968, inside Rio's samba world. Begins her artistic career in 1985, performing in musical theater. She enters the Rio de Janeiro Federal University in 1986, to study History. In 1988 she has her first short stories published in collective books. In the same year she founds the Forestry Theater of Rio de Janeiro starting the Rain Forest cultures research she continues to work on. In 1992, she performs solo in the "Love to Nature" Samba Show - a Special Cultural Program of the RIO-92 world conference on sustainable development.
In 1993 she moves to New York, where she studies Screen Writing and English Writing at the New School for Social Research. While in New york she performs at the 1994 Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival and presents concerts at The Symphonie Space among other places. Back to Rio, in 1996, she writes her first screenplays. Her Film debut in 2000, with A Funeral at the Samba School (26 min, 35mm, fiction) causes a major career switch and turns Danddara into the first Black woman Filmmaker of Brazil. This film was a finalist at the 2002 HBO Short Film Award.
She lives in Rio, where she founded a small production company.