Bárbara Bergamaschi Novaes (b. 1989, Brasília, Brazil) is an Italian-Brazilian academic, filmmaker, programmer, and cultural critic. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature, Culture, and Contemporaneity from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio, 2022), with a doctoral dissertation on Peter Tscherkassky’s cinema.

She is the author of 16 peer-reviewed journal articles (including Scopus/WoS), six book chapters, and numerous film criticism essays. As a film critic affiliated with ABRACCINE and FIPRESCI, she has contributed to O Estado de São Paulo, Público, Revista Cinética, and La Furia Umana.

 

In between 2013 and 2017, she worked in the film and television industries as Assistant Director (AD/ADF) and broadcast television producer, contributing to more than ten television series and promotional projects broadcast on Canal Futura, Canal Curta!, SporTV, TED, Turner, Cartoon Network, Canal Brasil, and EBC.

 

Her debut short film, Fora D’água / In Deep Water (2012), received a national award at the 17th Brazilian University Film Festival. Animal Azul / Blue Creature (2021), for which she served as cinematographer, was nominated for the Grand Prize of Brazilian Cinema by the Brazilian Film Academy.

 

She held a tenured lecturer position at the Department of Performing Arts, Federal University of São João del-Rei (DEACE-UFSJ), Brazil, where she taught courses in History of Spectacular Arts, Theatre and Politics, and Special Topics in Popular Culture.

 

Most recently, in 2022, she was Special Advisor to the Secretary of Culture and Creative Economy of the Government of Federal District (SECEC/DF), Brasília, Brazil. In 2023-2025 she was Science Communication Manager at ICNOVA–NOVA University of Lisbon and an Invited Assistant Professor in the Science Communication Department at NOVA-FHCS.

 

She is currently a collaborating researcher at CM&A- NOVA-FCSH and a film programmer for the Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival.