Rita Duque

Rita Duque is a Portuguese actress and creative artist. She was born and raised in Porto, where she trained acting at the ACE School of Arts, later graduating from the Institute of the Arts Barcelona. In 2020, as an object of study for her final university thesis on narratives through images, she developed her first photographic project "My Life with Rose". A year later, the project won first prize for Best Digital Diaporama at the 41st Autumn in Voronet International Film Festival in Romania. In the same year, her experimental short film "Rouge", developed during the pandemic, won Best Indie Short at the Europe Film Festival UK, and Best Foreign Documentary Short at the Hollywood Women's International Film Festival in Los Angeles. In 2022, she developed two partially biographical photo essays. The first, "Estado Próprio", was shot in Barcelona with Bulgarian actor and stuntman Hristo Bonev, and revolved around the performer's relationship with an abandoned space. The second one, "In Love with a Nymph", featured Portuguese actress Patrícia Garcez, and derived from the actress's relationship with her own body and personal objects in a vacant space. In the same year, Rita was member of jury chaired by Céline Sciamma at the Venice Biennale in the Giornate degli Autori section, while being an ambassador for Cinema Trindade and the Lux Audience Award. In 2023, she wrote the script and played the lead role for "Rubrum", directed by Pedro Nogueira as part of the 48h Film Festival in Lisbon, which earned her a nomination for Best Leading Performance. Early this year, she made her acting debut at the Cinemateca Portuguesa with "Adeus, Lisboa". The short film was written and directed by Joana Pacheco and relates the issues of housing through the experience of Joana, played by Rita Duque, who says goodbye to a Lisbon that refuses to give her a place to live.