National Coordinator of the National Cinema Plan at the Directorate-General for Education (Lisbon) since 2014. PhD in Letters - Cultural Studies, specializing in North American Studies - Film Studies (University of Lisbon). Master's degree in Art History - specializing in Contemporary Art History (FCSH - Nova University of Lisbon). Works at the Directorate-General for Education (DGE) since 2014. Teaching activity between 1983 and 2014. Integrated researcher in the Research Group, Media and Cultural Mediations (CEMRI - Open University). Full member of the Jury in the competitions of the Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual (ICA), in academic research projects at the Master's and Doctoral levels, and in various Film Festivals. Member of the Portuguese Film Academy. Participates in several Scientific Committees and Honorary Committees in the field of cinema and audiovisual. She co-coordinates the Cinema and Education group at the Association of Moving Image Researchers (AIM). She is a member of the Pedagogical Committee of the Association of History Teachers (APH). Her doctoral thesis, The Cross, the Sword and the Clavier: Representations of History in the Cinema of Cecil B. DeMille (2015), has been published.

VASCO PINTO LEITE was born in Lisbon on April 6, 1936. He graduated in 1959 with a degree in civil engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico. Alongside his professional activity as an engineer, from the second half of the 1960s until 1974, he dedicated himself to the production and distribution of non-professional films, with screenings and debates throughout the country, as well as to the organization of the activity in Portugal and in the territories of Angola and Mozambique, and also to the international relations of the movement. He is the author of short films that have won several national and international awards. For television, he directed the series “Memória Audiovisual” (1987 to 1989), “A Casa Sagrada de Malangatana” (1995), and “Encontros de África” (2001). He has published several literary works, notably the book “O Corpo de Delito - A Ideia do Futuro e a Questão Cultural Portuguesa” (2013), a reflection on the Portuguese cultural question from the period immediately before and after April 25th. He is a member of the Presidency of the “Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation” and co-founder of the “MPPM - Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East”.

Born in 1978, Luisa Homem is a filmmaker, editor, and founding partner of the production company TERRATREME Filmes. She currently lives in Lisbon. She studied Communication Sciences – Cinema at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon, and at Paris 8 University. As part of the Creativity and Artistic Creation Program of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, she participated in a documentary filmmaking course at Ateliers Varan. She has directed art films within the FCSH Film Creation Laboratory, several institutional films, and a television series for RTP2 about art museums in Portugal – A DAY AT THE MUSEUM. She co-directed two documentaries, THE CITIES AND THE EXCHANGES, with Pedro Pinho, and SÃO TOMÉ: ON THE TRAIL OF THE NATURALISTS, with Tiago Hespanha. She collaborated on the screenplay, art direction, and editing of the feature film THE NOTHING FACTORY, directed by Pedro Pinho. As an editor, she has collaborated with several filmmakers, including João Vladimiro, Inês Sapeta Dias, Leonor Noivo, Filipa Reis and João Miller Guerra, Frederico Lobo, Pedro Pinho, Tiago Hespanha, Leonor Teles, among others. She is currently developing a film about the geographer Suzanne Daveau, writing a screenplay for her first feature film, participating in the writing of a new screenplay by Pedro Pinho, and is co-director and teacher in the Cinema/Moving Image course at Ar.co.

João Gomes graduated in film editing and directing from ESTC and in Sociology from UNL. Since 2011, he has produced, directed, and written a dozen cinematographic and audiovisual works. Notable works include “Couto Mixto” (2023), a short film distinguished with 5 awards and wide international circulation, and “Noite de Santo António” (2015), his master's thesis project which earned him honors and several international selections. All of his works have been broadcast on RTP, including his first film, the documentary “Natália, A Diva Tragicomica” (2011), and the documentary series “Filhos de Tuga” (2024), which surpassed half a million viewers. In addition to his work as a filmmaker, he is also a film critic, educator, and cultural programmer, having founded the Cinalfama International Film Festival in 2009, where he remains artistic director.

Kitti Baracsi works at the intersection of art, critical pedagogy, and urban research, developing community and cultural initiatives, as well as collective and multimodal artistic practices, focusing on urban inequalities, collective practices, and knowledge production. She holds academic degrees in Communication Sciences, Aesthetics, and Pedagogy. Since 2006, she has been involved in education projects, community work, cultural initiatives, and research in the areas of education, housing, gender, and migration in countries such as Hungary, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Based in Lisbon, she collaborates with social movements, schools, associations, cultural institutions, and universities throughout Europe. She is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the LSE International Inequalities Institute and a collaborating researcher at the Networked Research Centre in Anthropology (CRIA). She is also a co-founder of the Criar Cidade Cooperative in Lisbon, as well as the intergenerational initiative Making the Neighborhood Our Home, among others. Her initiative, Periferias Dibujadas (Drawn Peripheries), addresses urban transformations, focusing on the voices of children and young people through collaborative research, art, and critical pedagogy. Within this framework, she coordinated and/or was responsible for the methodological design of several projects that use cinema as a tool for learning, inclusion, and shared authorship, such as *Fazer bairro, fazer escola* (Naples, 2018), *Albayzín, património humano* (Granada, 2018–2020), *Pequena Oficina de Antropologia / Mergulhar no bairro com as crianças* (Lisbon, 2021–2022), and *RiVER – Outros Olhares do Mediterrâneo*, in collaboration with the Festival Olhares do Mediterrâneo (2025). She is also a curator of film screenings made by children or young people about urban conflicts, presented within the framework of urban studies conferences or film festivals, such as the IV International Colloquium on Urban Conflicts (2025) or the Cinalfama Festival (2025).