Born in Lisbon in 1959, Pedro Costa trained as a film historian and worked as an assistant to Jorge Silva Melo and João Botelho before directing O Sangue (1989). In the late 1990s, he moved into the Fontainhas, a poor Lisbon slum, inhabited by immigrants from Cape Verde, and made a series of films with the people living there: Bones (1997), In Vanda's Room (2000) and Colossal Youth (2006). Shot on digital video with natural light and static compositions that recall Rembrandt and Caravaggio, these hybrid films of documentary and fiction made him one of the major figures of slow cinema. Later he made Horse Money (2014) and Vitalina Varela (2019), which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
Filmography
- Bones (1997)
- In Vanda's Room (2000)
- Colossal Youth (2006)
- Horse Money (2014)
- Vitalina Varela (2019)