Dominique Loreau was born in Brussels in 1955.
She studies one year the film direction and three years the editing at the INSAS. For three years, she studied History of Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

From 1980, she directed three short fiction films: Departure (directed with Philippe Simon), The jump in the life and Zigzags, while making numerous trips to Africa and earned her living as a film editor.

In 1988, she participated for more than a year in Tobie Nathan’s ethnopsychiatry consultations in Paris, that she filmed (La folie des autres), and attended Jean Rouch’s classes at the Cinémathèque Française.

From 1992, she directed fictional feature films, deeply rooted in a documentary reality, in which the actors played their own role and improvised according to a proposed outline, leaving room for chance, encounters, the passage of time, metamorphoses, and in which it develops underlying philosophical reflection: Names lives nowhere, Divine Carcass, As time goes by, In the eyes of a beast. His films have been selected in numerous international festivals as Berlinale, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Festival des films du Monde de Montréal, Visions du Réel, Edimbourg, Festival dei Popoli, Etats Généraux du Documentaire de Lussas, Londres, Sao Paulo…

Since 1992, she is a professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in script writing and film analysis.

Since 2003, in parallel to her work as a filmmaker, she has written poetic texts and novels, most of which have been published in collaboration with the painters Lionel Vinche, Loustal, Elsa Cha, Mathias Perez: L’eau du bain, Loin de Bissau , A pas brouillés, L’ombre dans le miroir, Papa où suis je, Ne pas dire.

She also develops a photography work.