Film director, visual artist, and audiovisual technician
Catarina Gonçalves (Azores, 1999) is a Portuguese film director, visual artist, and audiovisual technician based in Brussels. She works between documentary cinema, video art, and performance documentation. Her practice revolves around personal and collective memory in an intimate and embodied sense, often reflecting on the female body through themes such as sacrifice, possession, control, and ownership.
Alongside her artistic work, Catarina has operated at the intersection of creative direction and technical production. She served as Manager of Technical Operations at the Museum of Infinite Realities (MOIR), Belgium, where she oversaw immersive audiovisual systems, projection and lighting infrastructures, interactive installations, and technical team coordination. Her work bridged artistic vision and technological execution, combining storytelling sensitivity with hands-on technical expertise in large-scale immersive environments.
She is also a member of the programming and curatorial team of the Azorean International Film Festival (AZOREANIFF), contributing to film selection, curatorial development, and international dialogue. Over the years, she has been deeply involved in the European festival circuit — both as a filmmaker and as part of production and documentation teams. She has volunteered and collaborated with festivals such as Porto/Post/Doc, Porto Femme, Queer Porto, BEAST International Film Festival, and IDFA, working across production support, audiovisual coverage, photography, and guest coordination.
Her visual practice extends into photography and videography for dance, theatre, circus, and live performance. She collaborates with performing arts companies and independent artists, creating cinematic documentation and visual content that captures the physicality, rhythm, and ephemeral nature of bodies in motion. This dialogue between movement and image strongly informs her cinematic language.
Catarina completed her Bachelor’s degree in Sound and Image at the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University of Porto (2017–2020), followed by a Documentary Film Course at Kinodocs in Lisbon (2020–2021). She holds a Master of Arts in Documentary Film Directing from the DOC NOMADS Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) (2021–2023), having studied at Universidade Lusófona (Lisbon), SZFE – University of Theatre and Film Arts (Budapest), and LUCA School of Arts (Brussels).
Her first documentary short film, Mãos de Prata (2020), won Third Prize at the Prémios Sophia Estudante (Portuguese Cinema Academy) and First Prize at the Concordia Film Festival (Montreal), and was selected for Curtas de Vila do Conde, Porto/Post/Doc, and the Prémios Sophia.
Her installation piece, Light Years (2022), was presented at Walk&Talk Arts Festival (Azores) after receiving the Artistic Residency for Young Creators Award.
Her short fiction film, Mátria (2023), created within the centenary celebrations of writer and congresswoman Natália Correia and organized by the Cara Lavada collective (Azores), premiered at IndieLisboa International Film Festival in the “Novíssimos” section.In 2023, her documentary short Until I Can Breathe premiered at Curtas de Vila do Conde International Film Festival, where it received the Best Director Award.
Her latest documentary short, Dans un Souffle / In a Whisper (2025), premiered at Sheffield DocFest, where it won the Grand Jury Award. The film also received the Canal 180 Award and the MAD Studios Award at Porto/Post/Doc International Film Festival.
Across formats, from cinema to immersive installations, from live performance to festival programming. Catarina’s work is guided by a search for intimacy, resistance, and the fragile poetry of bodies that insist on being seen and remembered.
