Pedro Costa

Pedro Costa is a Portuguese film director While studying history at University of Lisbon Costa switched to film courses at Lisbon Theatre and Film School Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema where he was a student of António Reis Paulo Rocha and Alberto Seixas Santos After working as an assistant director to several directors such as Jorge Silva Melo Vítor Gonçalves 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 In Vandas Room Colossal Youth was selected for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and earned the IndependentExperimental prize Los Angeles Film Critics Association in 2008 He is considered to be part of The School of Reis film family António Reis Portuguese director was his teacher at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called Pedro Costa the Samuel Beckett of cinema 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 socially disadvantaged and shot in a natural and lowkey way in documentary format some are docufictions