Directed by Pedro Costa

Directed by Pedro Costa

3 Episodes

Portuguese cinematic poet Pedro Costa makes uncompromising, seemingly daunting works that, on the surface, appear rigorously spare. Look closer, however, and they reveal untold depths of human feeling and some of the most sublime images in contemporary cinema. Frequently working with nonprofessional actors—which lends his films a documentary-like realism—Costa turns his unflinching camera on some of Lisbon’s poorest and most disenfranchised communities in endlessly rich revelations like OSSOS, IN VANDA’S ROOM, and COLOSSAL YOUTH, each set in the city’s impoverished Fontainhas quarter. Though Costa has made only a handful of films since the late 1980s, each is a rare treasure that manages to find truth and beauty in the bleakest of circumstances.

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Directed by Pedro Costa

3 Episodes

  • Ossos
    1:37:55
    Ossos
    Episode 1

    Ossos

    Episode 1

    Directed by Pedro Costa • 1997 • France, Netherlands, Portugal

    The first film in Pedro Costa's transformative trilogy about Fontainhas, an impoverished quarter of Lisbon, OSSOS is a tale of young lives torn apart by desperation. After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts...

  • In Vanda’s Room
    2:50:51
    In Vanda’s Room
    Episode 2

    In Vanda’s Room

    Episode 2

    Directed by Pedro Costa • 2000 • Germany, Portugal, Switzerland

    For the extraordinarily beautiful second film in his Fontainhas trilogy, Pedro Costa jettisoned his earlier films' larger crews to burrow even deeper into the Lisbon ghetto and the lives of its desperate inhabitants. With the inti...

  • Colossal Youth
    2:36:13
    Colossal Youth
    Episode 3

    Colossal Youth

    Episode 3

    Directed by Pedro Costa • 2006 • France, Portugal, Switzerland
    Starring Ventura, Vanda Duarte, Paula Barrulas

    Many of the lost souls of OSSOS and In VANDA’S ROOM return in the spectral landscape of COLOSSAL YOUTH, which brings to Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas films a new theatrical, tragic grandeur. ...

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