Vanessa Ribeiro-Rodrigues

Vanessa is a filmmaker, researcher, and lecturer at Lusófona University, affiliated with CICANT. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication for Development, with the thesis Cinematic Narratives, Humanizing Stories. She studied Specialization in Documentary Dramaturgy in Cuba and Documentary Filmmaking in São Paulo, Brazil. 

Her work combines documentary film, sound, and photography to explore themes of gender, migration, and memory. She directed Land's Baptism (immigration in Brazil), co-wrote "Remember Us" (refugees in Jordan), and is developing The Seed Keepers (Guinea Bissau) focused on ancestral female knowledge and climate action, as well as The Sand Spell (colonial narratives in Mozambique, Real Ficção and Sabina Films, 2025). She also co-directed "Feminisms: The Freedom to Be" (Portugal, 82', 2025), a documentary about feminisms in Portugal as a result of the research project FEMglocal. 

Her approach blends artistic research and participatory pedagogy, a ligne she is also exploring in her recent research work: "I dance with pain", a film and interdisciplinary project about female chronic experience that blends Medical Hummanities, cinema & visual arts, and sensory studies. As a professor she teaches for instance Audiovisual Creation Project and Transmedia and Hybrid Narratives and New Communication Expressions at the Phd of Communication & Activisms. More recently, she is also part of the teaching team at DOC NOMADS Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) in Documentary Filmmaking.