WRITER / DIRECTOR, VISUAL ARTIST & EDITOR
Portuguese filmmaker driven by discomfort and absurdity.
Rita’s narrative short-film THE COOP, 2021, premiered at the Lincoln Film Center in New York and won the IATSE ICG Emerging Cinematographer Award in Los Angeles, highlighting the cinematography of the short screened on 4 continents.
Her documentary The Foreigners, 2018, premiered in Stockholm, Sweden, and after screening at multiple festivals across Europe, won the 1st prize of the AltoMinho Storytelling competition.
Rita won a Fulbright Scholarship to complete her MFA in Directing at the College of Motion Picture Arts in the United States of America, where she also taught screenwriting. Four years before, she had been the recipient of the 1st Portuguese American Postgraduate Society summer scholarship in New York.
She was selected as one of the New Faces of the Creative Industries by the H Club in London and chosen to participate in the Storytelling Masterclass at the Google headquarters, leading her work to be featured on NOWNESS. She was the winner of the British Film Competition 2019 Future Film Festival’s video competition.
Rita also works as an assistant director (House of Dragons, Fast & Furious X), a commercial editor (NZME, Cuetone Media, Ave Rara), and a content creator (FIFA’s World Cup).
Rita has lived in 8 countries and speaks 4 languages.