| Pedro Costa | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 3, 1959 Lisbon, Portugal |
| Nationality | Portuguese |
| Occupation | Film director and writer |
| Influenced by | Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Jean-Luc Godard, Yasujiro Ozu, John Ford, Mikio Naruse, Jacques Tourneur, Nicholas Ray |
Pedro Costa (born 1959) is a Portuguese film director. He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to depict the marginalised people in desperate living situations. Many of his films are set in a district of Lisbon inhabited by the socially disadvantaged and shot in a natural and low-key way that makes them resemble documentaries.
Contents |
While studying history at University of Lisbon, Costa switched to film courses at School of Theatre and Cinema (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema). After working as an assistant director to several directors such as Jorge Silva Melo and João Botelho, he made a first feature film O Sangue (The Blood) in 1989.
He collected the France Culture Award (Foreign Cineaste of the Year) at 2002 Cannes Film Festival for directing the film No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda's Room). Juventude em Marcha ("Youth on the March", known as Colossal Youth in Anglophone countries, and En avant, jeunesse ["Onward, Youth"] in Francophone countries) was selected for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival[1] and earned the Independent/Experimental prize (Los Angeles Film Critics Association) in 2008.