Samira Vera Cruz

Born in São Vicente, Samira Vera-Cruz is a young Cape-Verdean film director and producer. With a major in Film Studies and a minor in Global Communications from the American University of Paris (France), Samira has experience working in Cabo Verde, Angola and Mozambique. She started the production company Parallax Produções in November 2016, and began making films. She debuted her career as a director with the short film Buska Santu, which toured in various festivals and won the Best Fiction Prize at Oiá Festival, 2017 (Mindelo, Cabo Verde). Winner of the Short Films PALOP-TL UE Contest 25 years, representing Cabo Verde, Samira directed her first documentary Hora di Bai, which premiered in Maputo, Mozambique and toured internationally. The young director was selected for Talents Durban 2019, during the Durban International Film Festival, in which she participated with her documentary project And Who Will Cook? and received the PR Consulting Award at the end of the residency. She was also selected with the same project for FIDADOC’s writing residency in 2019 (Morocco), Durban Filmmart (South Africa) and Ouaga Film Lab (Burkina Faso) in 2020. At the latter she won the IDFA and World Cinema Fund/Goethe Institute Awards. In March 2020, Samira became the coordinator for the PALOP-TL Film and Audiovisual Network, with the aim of promoting production and distribution in the region.