While showing a short film at Berlinale in 2006, Sheean met a scientist from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, the brother of cinematographer Anna Howard, who became director of photography on the film.
Her first feature film, Buddha Collapsed out of Shame won an award at Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal, Canada in 2007, as well as two awards from San Sebastian International Film Festival, Spain, and the Crystal Bear for the Best Feature Film by the Generation Kplus Children’s Jury at the Berlinale Film Festival 2008.
An alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus, Jacqueline Kalimunda produced and directed in 2012 Burning Down, a Focus Features Africa First short movie with Eriq Ebouaney (Brian de Palma’s Femme fatale, Raoul Peck’s Lumumba) and Cyril Guei.
She has worked with filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour on several projects, including Pashmaloo which premiered at the Berlinale in 2011 and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which will premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
At the Berlinale 2010, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro announced plans to work on a remake of Scorsese's film Taxi Driver.
She was present at the 2005 Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, to promote two films she had acted in: Tickets (2005), a three-segment film directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, and Ken Loach, and Crustacés et Coquillages, a comedy directed by the French duo of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau.