Expelled from her mother’s biological oven in 90s’ Portugal, Rita has since developed an obsession for films from the same period.

Her narrative short-film THE COOP (2021) premiered at the Lincoln Film Center in New York, won the IATSE ICG Emerging Cinematographer Award in Los Angeles, and went on to screen across 4 continents. Her documentary The Foreigners (2018) premiered in Stockholm, toured festivals across Europe, and won 1st prize at the AltoMinho Storytelling competition.

Rita won a Fulbright Scholarship to complete her MFA in Directing at the College of Motion Picture Arts in the United States, where she also taught screenwriting. Four years prior, she had been the first recipient of the Portuguese American Postgraduate Society summer scholarship in New York, establishing a pattern of being given money to leave the country.

She was named one of the New Faces of the Creative Industries by the H Club London, selected for a Storytelling Masterclass at Google HQ, and had her work featured on NOWNESS. She won the Video Competition at the 2019 BFI Future Film Festival, and in 2026, her photography was featured on i-D Magazine. On set, she has worked as an assistant director (House of the Dragons, Fast & Furious X) and as a commercial editor (NZME, Cuetone Media, and Ave Rara).

Rita has lived in 8 countries, speaks 4 languages, and somewhere along the way accumulated a collection of high-risk work certifications she may never use again: forklift operator, EWP licence, Open Water Diving certificate, among many others. She has also found herself in large-scale chaos: filming at the FIFA Women's World Cup and helping organize Blazing Swan, Australia's Burning Man.

A significant chapter of her life and personality was written in Aotearoa, New Zealand.