Susana Casares was born in Barcelona, Spain. After receiving a BA in Translation and Interpreting, she completed her BFA in Fine Arts with a special focus in Video Art and Photography. She received a scholarship to spend two years in the department of Visual Communication at the HfG in Offenbach, Germany, where she began to explore narrative and documentary filmmaking. Casares has directed documentaries and fiction shorts that have been shown in art institutions and festivals around the world, like the Berlinale Talent Campus, the Instituto Cervantes and Caixa Forum. Her work explores the tension between the self and the other, especially in the context of the dialogue between different cultural traditions.

In 2008 she was awarded a scholarship from Fundacial La Caixa, a prestigious Spanish foundation, to complete an MFA in Filmmaking at UCLA. While at UCLA, she received the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award and the Mary Pickford Award. In 2011 she became a Telluride FilmLab fellow and a Film Independent Project Involve fellow. She is currently developing a feature-length documentary about the effects of current violence in Mexico with the support of the Tribeca Film Institute, IDFA and the Documentary Campus Masterschool.