Sara Castelo Branco holds a PhD in Arts and Sciences of Art and Communication Sciences made in a cotutelle between the Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne (Paris, France) and FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal), with a grant from the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology. Her PhD thesis explored the circumstance of cinema in its current expanded and post-medial condition, focusing on the work of Portuguese artists to propose a reflection on how contemporary art has become a central place to question certain cinematographic transformations. Currently, she is a collaborator researcher at the CIC.Digital - Centre for Research in Communication, Information and Digital Culture (FCSH-UNL), and a integrated researcher at CITAR - Center for Science and Technology of the Arts (Escola das Artes da Universidade Católica do Porto). In 2014, she concluded a master's degree in Art Studies - Art Theory and Criticism at the Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, and in 2012 a degree in Communication and Cultural Sciences at the Universidade Lusófona do Porto. Her practice has been developing from the close articulation between academic research, writing, and the curatorship of exhibitions and experimental film screenings. In her most recent research, she address questions related to how essayistic documentaries have questioned mystical and magical imaginations as possible forms of social resilience and empowerment. In 2023, she organized the project Solarity Prospects, composed of a series of events, which involved an exhibition, film screening and symposium about contemporary and ancient politics of the sun and energy at ICI Berlin Institut for Cultural Inquiry/Bard College Berlin, ACUD Galerie and Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst (Berlin, DE). She has curated exhibitions and screenings of artists' films and experimental cinema in institutions such as Cité Internationale des Arts (2023, Paris, FR), Brotéria (2024, Lisbon, PT), ACUD Galerie (2023, Berlin, DE), Carpintarias de São Lázaro (2022, Lisbon, PT), Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst (2019/2023, Berlin, DE), CRIPTA 747 (2021, Turin, IT), Galerias Municipais de Lisboa (2021, Lisbon, PT) or Galeria Zé dos Bois (2021, Lisbon, Portugal, PT). She did artistic residencies at institutions such as CRIPTA 747 (2021, Turin, IT) and Cité Internationale des Arts (2023, Paris, FR). These projects dealt with social and environmental problematics, and, more specifically, its associations with eco-media, technological culture, the moving image and contemporary art. In the field of art criticism about cinema and contemporary art, she contributes regularly with articles and essays for magazines and art catalogues (Mousse, Archive Books, Contemporânea, ATLAS Projectos, among others).