Catarina Vasconcelos was born in Lisbon in 1986. She holds a B.A. from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and completed a post-graduate course in Visual Anthropology at the ISCTE-IUL. She received a Master's degree from the Royal College of Art, in London, where her final project was the short film Metaphor, or Sadness Inside Out (2014). The film premiered in the Cinéma du Réel festival, where it received the award for best short film. It also screened in numerous festivals, including RIDM - Montreal International Documentary Festival (Best International Medium-Length Film Award), DokLeipzig, Moscow International Film Festival and Doclisboa. Her first documentary feature The Metamorphosis of Birds premiered in the new Encounters section at the 70th Berlinale, in February 2020, where it received the FIPRESCI award of the International Federation of Film Critics. Since then, the film has been shown in various festivals, such as New Directors/New Films or San Sebastian-Donostia International Film Festival where it was awarded best film in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section. The film won as well the best film award at the Vilnius Kino Festival, in Lithuania, the Special Jury Award at the Taipei Film Festival, best film award at Dokufest among others. In this moment, Catarina Vasconcelos is preparing her first feature fiction, “Pintura Inacabada” (Unfinished Painting).
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