
Directing
João Canijo
Born 1957-12-10 · Porto, Portugal
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).
Acting credits
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
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
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
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
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
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
Behind the camera
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
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
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
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
6.0A 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
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.
Fugas.pt
2003
No synopsis available yet.
As Ucranianas
—
No synopsis available yet.
Encenação
—
No synopsis available yet.
Encenação
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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
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
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
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
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
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