Luísa Homem’s relationship with cinema is one of multiple engagements and entry points. A documentary maker with camera in hand, she is also a screenwriter via editing and writing. Homem also develops her practice in a profoundly collaborative fashion, contributing to projects of a network of filmmakers.

This plurality of involvement with the language of film is also evident in her role as co-founder of the production collective Terratreme, in 2008, and in her ongoing interest in teaching and mentorship as a Professor of Cinema and supervisor of student projects.

In her ever poetic films, the natural world takes centre stage. The manner in which our species interacts with the spaces we occupy is subject to a lingering gaze, be it the extractivist transformation of an African island in As Cidades e as Trocas (2014), or the reconstruction of a scientific expedition to São Tomé and Príncipe in No Trilho dos Naturalistas (2016). It’s no surprise, then, that her latest project, Suzanne Daveau (2019), is an emotional and biographical portrait of the French geographer and teacher, who moved to Portugal for love in 1965.

Batalha dedicates an expanded retrospective to Luísa Homem, curated in dialogue with the director, comprising her films and a paradigmatic selection of the filmmaker's collaborative work.