Teresa Medina is one of the most renowned female cinematographers in the industry in the fields of film, television, commercials and documentaries in Spain. In a country dominated by men behind the camera, Medina uses her experience and knowledge to break gender stereotypes in order to help promote equality in the film industry and consistently portray Spanish cinema on the international stage.

Medina graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid, she has a master’s degree from the American Film Institute AFI and from the UCLA College Professional Screenwriting Program. At the age of 12, a love for photography was born and, through a painstaking process of experimentation, she started discovering what worked and what did not work in a photograph, realizing that it had the power to retell a story. She spent more than a decade in the United States, where she worked in independent productions, and after completing her stay she returned to Spain, where she applied her professional experience in domestic production. 

She is the first female president of the Spanish Association of Photography Directors AEC, and since taking office in 2018, she has initiated changes in the profession in Spain. She has recievied the Kodak Vision Award.

From her many years of cinematographic experience, we can highlight her work on the following feature films: “Things I Never Told You” (1996), a love romance that won the Goya Award for Best Screenplay and won a double award at the Prague Film Festival, “The Blue Dinner” (2001) about a migrant from Puerto Rico who starts a new life in the United States, winner of the Alma Award, “The 24 Hour Woman” (1999) won Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival, Todo está oscuro (1997), which won Best Film at the Bogotá Film Festival, the daring erotic thriller Female Perversions (1996) with Tilda Swinton, which was nominated for Best Film at Sundance, and Reflections on a Crime (1994) which won Best Film at the Avignon Film Festival.

She filmed nine episodes of the first season of the popular American television series “Gilmore Girls” (2000) and has filmed commercials for the director Spike Lee, the Sundance Film Festival, and major corporations such as Sony.

Medina teaches at the University of Nebrija and at the Vauxhalle School in Madrid. She is currently working on the TV series “La Favorita” 1922 (2025), a TV series set in the 1920s in Madrid, where two women use their culinary skills to open a restaurant. Medina is also a member of the Spanish Film Academy. She has given seminars at Chapman University, the International Alliance of Theater Stage Employees (IATSE), and at the Kodak Institute.