
Directing
Catarina Alves Costa
Born
1967-01-01 (59)
Place of birth
Oporto, Portugal
Known for
Directing
Credits
21 titles
Catarina Alves Costa is a Portuguese documentary filmmaker and anthropologist. In 2000, she co-founded with Catarina Mourão the production company, Laranja Azul.
Known for
NROrlando Pantera (1967-2001) was a gifted Cape Verdean musician who died at 33 before releasing his solo album. This film revives his legacy through innovative sound and archival material from his daughter. It features contemporary interpretations by artists like Mayra Andrade and Princezito, highlighting his lasting influence on musicians today.
Orlando Pantera
2025
Documentary about the artistic creation in Cape Verde, with the director following, during the preparation of one of the editions of the Mindelact festival, the rehearsals and backstage of the artists. It focuses on the birth and discussion of ideas in groups, looking for ways to express a new identity. The strength of Orlando Pantera stands out, whose premature death at the age of 33 took out of Cape Verde one of the most promising creators of recent times.
More Soul
2001
NR'One day I realized it no longer made sense to make things to hang on walls'... Lourdes Castro became known as the artist 'who took care of shadows'. Throughout her international career as an artist, Lourdes developed the concept of shadow, giving it different forms and finally reducing it to the minimum and dematerializing it. She has lived in Munich, Berlin and Paris, but 40 years ago she decided to return to Madeira, her birth place, where she has lived ever since 'in the shadows'. 'What is Lourdes 'taking care of' nowadays?
Through Shadows
2010
10.0Lisbon has the second largest community of Hindus in Europe. This film portrays this community, focusing on a family originally from Diu, who then emigrated to Mozambique and then, in 1976, to Lisbon. The film portrays the contrast and conflict between this group of Diu families, low caste with the Lohanas group, the merchants caste. A new temple is being built, however in the courtyard of his house the family Carsane still makes its parties and alternative rituals ....
Swagatam
1998
6.4In Aparecida, an industrial area in Northern Rio de Janeiro state, the annual festival that takes place on August 15th is being prepared. The floats are being decorated, and the coffins in which the penitents will be laid, according to a centuries-old tradition, are already prepared. The new priest, however, wants to end the tradition of making promises to Our Lady of Aparecida to perform "burials." Conflict is inevitable. This is a film that tells the story of those who fulfill promises to Our Lady of Aparecida, their desires and personal stories, reflecting on traditional and official religiosity, tradition and modernity.
Senhora Aparecida
1994
6.0At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.
The King's Trial
1990
Film credits
1990s · 2 titles
6.0At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.
The King's Trial
1990
8.011th century. Descended from the aristocracy, Alexis flees a world dominated by money and strength. The young man, in love with justice and freedom, sets off on the roads to discover the world, abandoning his wife and family.
Le voyage étranger
1992
Behind the camera
NROrlando Pantera (1967-2001) was a gifted Cape Verdean musician who died at 33 before releasing his solo album. This film revives his legacy through innovative sound and archival material from his daughter. It features contemporary interpretations by artists like Mayra Andrade and Princezito, highlighting his lasting influence on musicians today.
Orlando Pantera
2025
Documentary about the artistic creation in Cape Verde, with the director following, during the preparation of one of the editions of the Mindelact festival, the rehearsals and backstage of the artists. It focuses on the birth and discussion of ideas in groups, looking for ways to express a new identity. The strength of Orlando Pantera stands out, whose premature death at the age of 33 took out of Cape Verde one of the most promising creators of recent times.
More Soul
2001
NR'One day I realized it no longer made sense to make things to hang on walls'... Lourdes Castro became known as the artist 'who took care of shadows'. Throughout her international career as an artist, Lourdes developed the concept of shadow, giving it different forms and finally reducing it to the minimum and dematerializing it. She has lived in Munich, Berlin and Paris, but 40 years ago she decided to return to Madeira, her birth place, where she has lived ever since 'in the shadows'. 'What is Lourdes 'taking care of' nowadays?
Through Shadows
2010
10.0Lisbon has the second largest community of Hindus in Europe. This film portrays this community, focusing on a family originally from Diu, who then emigrated to Mozambique and then, in 1976, to Lisbon. The film portrays the contrast and conflict between this group of Diu families, low caste with the Lohanas group, the merchants caste. A new temple is being built, however in the courtyard of his house the family Carsane still makes its parties and alternative rituals ....
Swagatam
1998
6.4In Aparecida, an industrial area in Northern Rio de Janeiro state, the annual festival that takes place on August 15th is being prepared. The floats are being decorated, and the coffins in which the penitents will be laid, according to a centuries-old tradition, are already prepared. The new priest, however, wants to end the tradition of making promises to Our Lady of Aparecida to perform "burials." Conflict is inevitable. This is a film that tells the story of those who fulfill promises to Our Lady of Aparecida, their desires and personal stories, reflecting on traditional and official religiosity, tradition and modernity.
Senhora Aparecida
1994
NRBetween 1958 and 1961, Margot Dias participated in four ethnographic missions to the northern end of Mozambique. She shot and taped hundreds of minutes—unique visual and sound recordings of Makonde culture. One seeks to portray the woman behind the records from those trips, from her youth in Germany in the 1920s, to meeting and marrying Portuguese ethnologist Jorge Dias, to the missions they made together to the then Portuguese colony. As she meets with Makonde people today and hands them back these images, the director seeks the gaze of the other director, whom she knew at the end of her life.
Margot
2022
Houses to sell…houses to live in…houses to fill and die in… Mr. António Carlos works in a real estates agency, he is pressurized daily by his superiors to close contracts and bring profit to the company. Joana, a single mother, and her baby, Joaquim, are moving house hoping for a different life. Mr. Pinto has an old-fashioned removal company and his days are spent waiting for the phone to ring, but there isn’t much work and when finally work shows up it always hides a surprise. Three stories set in Oporto, Portugal, about people, houses, and restless lonely urban lives.
Restless
2002
9.0A documentary about Álvaro Siza Vieira in Cape Verde and his project to restore the old town of Ribeira Grande, the first city to be built by the Portuguese in Cape Verde on the island of Santiago in 1462.
O Arquitecto e a Cidade Velha
2004
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Um Ramadão em Lisboa
2019
The film tells the story of SAAL, Local Ambulatory Support Service (1974 - 1976), a movement launched after a revolution by a group of architects who responded to the struggle on the street by the poor residents who in the hot summer of 1974 shouted "Housing Yes! Tents ni! ".
Houses For The People
2014
A film about the process of artisanal making of silk. In the beginning of the filme Teresa Frade, the main character, tries to find the leaves for the newborn silkworms.
A Seda é um Mistério
2003
No synopsis available yet.
O Linho é um Sonho
2003
NRA portrait of António Campos, an extraordinary cineaste that was called an amateur, one of the most unique Portuguese directors due to the way he filmed the country on the 1960 and 1970’s. Considered as a director out of the mainstream, a loner, instinctive, Campos stands for the passion of filming.
We Talk About António Campos
2009
No synopsis available yet.
Fio de Azeite
2015
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Rituais de Inverno com Máscaras
2001
NRA documentary about Margot Dias (Germany, 1908 - Portugal, 2001), an ethnologist who shot between 1958-61 among the Makonde tribe, at Mueda, Mozambique. The film is an inner journey that will gradually unravel the circumstances in which these original filming were made, during the period of Portuguese domination of Mozambique, based on Margot Dias' unpublished diary and other texts and sounds, from archives related to the colonial period. But it's also these materials' confrontation with the people we are meeting on the trip to Mozambique, to whom we want to return part of its history.
Viagem aos Makonde
2019
NRA film about rural houses in the interior of the Algarve, showing the relationship between the present and memories evoked in the intimacy of the home. Working architecture from the "social imaginary", focusing on how homes were and are lived.
Pedra e Cal
2016
No synopsis available yet.
Regresso à Terra
1992

