
Directing
João Canijo
Born — Died
1957-12-10 — 2026-01-29
Place of birth
Porto, Portugal
Known for
Directing
Credits
46 titles
João Canijo (born 10 December, 1957; Porto) is a Portuguese filmmaker. His film Get a Life was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. His 2011 film Blood of My Blood was selected as the Portuguese entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. His 2023 film Bad Living won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. Before his directorial debut, Canijo worked as assistant director for Wim Wenders in The State of Things (1982) and for Werner Schroeter in Der Rosenkönig (1986).
Known for
7.2Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.
Lisbon Story
1994
7.1A regular family living in the outskirts of Lisbon sees the serenity of their lives shaken beyond any remedy within a week.
Blood of My Blood
2011
4.8In a family-run hotel near the northern coast of Portugal, several women from the same family, spanning different generations, live together. Their relationship, poisoned by bitterness, struggles to survive in the decaying hotel. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter in this claustrophobic space provokes turmoil and rekindles latent hatreds and accumulated resentments.
Bad Living
2023
5.6A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.
Living Bad
2023
NRWest, end of the summer. Laura works at the pear harvesting, a family business. During the afternoon, Carol arrives at the village to spend a few vacation days with her friends. That night, when Laura catches them stealing pears from one of her father’s orchards, her friend confronts her about her true intent.
O Pomar
2024
6.4Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.
Lusitanian Illusion
2010
Film credits
2010s · 3 titles
NRThe film follows the adventures of a bride and her family on the verge of a nervous breakdown on her wedding day.
The Day of My Wedding
2016
NRAn actress travels to Lisbon representing a film where she has a secondary role, regarding nobody else was available to go. In the Q&A in the Cinematheque she doesn't know how to answer the audience questions.
Los Barcos
2016
5.0Welcome to Lisbon: there are mermaids by the Tagus and birds flying over the old city; there are mad scientists and singing fish; lost tourist guides and lost tourists; fado and sad guitars. What a weird city you may think - but no. Lisbon is about being different, sarcastic, welcoming to foreigners even in an economic crisis. Different directors became fascinated by our strangeness. We became fascinated by these directors. The city is never the same in these four episodes, here in Lisbon.
Here in Lisbon
2015
1990s · 2 titles
7.2Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.
Lisbon Story
1994
6.6Nogueira, a man in his fifties, is a relic of times long past. While the youngsters at the school where he works as a caretaker still think the world is their oyster, Nogueira knows that, for him, most doors have long closed.
Step by Step
1990
Behind the camera
7.1A regular family living in the outskirts of Lisbon sees the serenity of their lives shaken beyond any remedy within a week.
Blood of My Blood
2011
7.1A regular family living in the outskirts of Lisbon sees the serenity of their lives shaken beyond any remedy within a week.
Blood of My Blood
2011
4.8In a family-run hotel near the northern coast of Portugal, several women from the same family, spanning different generations, live together. Their relationship, poisoned by bitterness, struggles to survive in the decaying hotel. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter in this claustrophobic space provokes turmoil and rekindles latent hatreds and accumulated resentments.
Bad Living
2023
4.8In a family-run hotel near the northern coast of Portugal, several women from the same family, spanning different generations, live together. Their relationship, poisoned by bitterness, struggles to survive in the decaying hotel. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter in this claustrophobic space provokes turmoil and rekindles latent hatreds and accumulated resentments.
Bad Living
2023
5.6A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.
Living Bad
2023
5.6A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.
Living Bad
2023
6.4Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.
Lusitanian Illusion
2010
6.4Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.
Lusitanian Illusion
2010
No synopsis available yet.
Encenação
—
No synopsis available yet.
Encenação
—
6.0A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.
In the Darkness of the Night
2004
6.0A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.
In the Darkness of the Night
2004
A moment in the life of a grievieng mother with the identity crisis of her teenage daughter. The mother insists on wanting to understand what she only should accept, the daughter can not explain what should be accepted.
Mãe Há Só Uma
2006
A moment in the life of a grievieng mother with the identity crisis of her teenage daughter. The mother insists on wanting to understand what she only should accept, the daughter can not explain what should be accepted.
Mãe Há Só Uma
2006
5.9The journey of 11 women while they go on a pilgrimage from Bragança to Fatima.
Fátima
2017
5.9The journey of 11 women while they go on a pilgrimage from Bragança to Fatima.
Fátima
2017
4.0This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.
Raul Brandão was a Great Writer...
2012
4.0This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.
Raul Brandão was a Great Writer...
2012
No synopsis available yet.
As Ucranianas
—
7.3During one winter night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.
Get a Life
2001
7.3During one winter night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.
Get a Life
2001
4.0Throughout a year's work, a group of ten actors and a film director will work together on the creation of the characters and on the structure of the plot of a new film to come. Long sessions of discussion, rehearsals and endless repetitions serve to develop the most important scenes of that plot until it takes its ultimate form, in the film which results from this work.
The Actor's Work
2011
7.1Maria is a sweet child. She hasn’t father and doesn’t like her mother. She has a boyfriend, A bandit who would like to change his class.
Lovely Child
1990
7.1Maria is a sweet child. She hasn’t father and doesn’t like her mother. She has a boyfriend, A bandit who would like to change his class.
Lovely Child
1990
NRThe film follows the adventures of a bride and her family on the verge of a nervous breakdown on her wedding day.
The Day of My Wedding
2016
5.5In Caxinas, a fishing neighborhood in Vila do Conde, a city on the north of Portugal, the relationship between the fishermen and their wives is based on vital trust and reciprocal and absolute dependence, in order to assure their families survival.
That's Love
2013
5.5In Caxinas, a fishing neighborhood in Vila do Conde, a city on the north of Portugal, the relationship between the fishermen and their wives is based on vital trust and reciprocal and absolute dependence, in order to assure their families survival.
That's Love
2013
NRA journey through the Beiras region. The houses, the cafes, the streets, the people still living in them. What the lands were and are, and the testimonies of those still living there. The day-by-day of some of those people – less and less, and increasingly aged. And alone.
Diary of Beiras
2017
No synopsis available yet.
Fugas.pt
2003
NRCastro Laboreiro, in the far north of Portugal, is a place whose hills lead to a dead-end street. They call it the end-of-the-world’s pit. Men and wolves live abreast. Wolves leave their lair to freely attack the preys of men locked in their burrows. Both trapped in this huge pitfall called life from where no-one gets out alive.
Fojos
2020
6.5Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to oversee the installation of his paintings in a joint exhibition with another Berlin artist, Hanna Brauer (Charlotte Schwab), Hanna never shows up. Hoffmann is puzzled because he is certain he saw a video sequence with Hanna at the exhibition, and he begins to look for her. Another Lisbon cultural center, a theater, is also having problems that may or may not be related -- and the mystery deepens when Hanna is found dead, either by her own hand, or murdered.
No One Twice
1985
6.2A touching and tragic real life story about a group of Portuguese fishermen who get caught in the middle of a storm in the Tejo river (Lisbon) and struggle to survive.
Tarde Demais
2000
In Caxinas, the relationship between the woman and the fisherman is founded on trust, born of their mutual and complete dependence, which is vital for the survival of the family. The wife and the fisherman trust and depend on each other, one to survive, the other to manage his life.
Obligation
2012
In Caxinas, the relationship between the woman and the fisherman is founded on trust, born of their mutual and complete dependence, which is vital for the survival of the family. The wife and the fisherman trust and depend on each other, one to survive, the other to manage his life.
Obligation
2012
No synopsis available yet.
A Audição
2002
No synopsis available yet.
Crimes do Coração
1989
5.2Lúcia is misbegotten, unloved and the eternal widow of her own father. A cry of rage in bodily form, she is mad, maltreated and humbled. She wears mourning in remembrance of her mothers crime and betrayal, and gives vent to her inconsolable pain to make sure theres no rest or respite for the killers of her father. She lives in hope of her brothers return so she can fulfil her promise of avenging her fathers blood.
Misbegotten
2007
5.2Lúcia is misbegotten, unloved and the eternal widow of her own father. A cry of rage in bodily form, she is mad, maltreated and humbled. She wears mourning in remembrance of her mothers crime and betrayal, and gives vent to her inconsolable pain to make sure theres no rest or respite for the killers of her father. She lives in hope of her brothers return so she can fulfil her promise of avenging her fathers blood.
Misbegotten
2007
5.1In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.
Black Shoes
1998
5.1In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.
Black Shoes
1998
