Mónica Santos is a multifaceted author with two Sophia Awards from the Portuguese Film Academy, a César nomination from the French Film Academy, and over 70 international distinctions, including selections at festivals such as Hiroshima, Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, Annecy and Curtas Vila do Conde.
Her work reinvents reality through a poetic and surreal gaze, creating worlds that suspend the familiar and expand the visible. Moving between fiction, animation and documentary, she explores the border between the tangible and the dreamlike with a singular visual language.
After completing her degree in Sound and Image at the Portuguese Catholic University and her master's at the Royal College of Art on a Gulbenkian scholarship, she has gone on to work across a range of film genres.
She currently divides her time between filmmaking and art direction. She is a member of the Portuguese Film Academy and the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a regular juror at national and international festivals.
