João Canijo

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

Lisbon Story poster
7.2

Wim 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

Blood of My Blood poster
7.1

A 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

Bad Living poster
4.8

In 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

Living Bad poster
5.6

A 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

O Pomar poster
NR

West, 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

Lusitanian Illusion poster
6.4

Images 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

Behind the camera

Blood of My Blood poster
7.1

A 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

Blood of My Blood poster
7.1

A 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

Bad Living poster
4.8

In 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

Bad Living poster
4.8

In 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

Living Bad poster
5.6

A 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

Living Bad poster
5.6

A 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

Lusitanian Illusion poster
6.4

Images 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

Lusitanian Illusion poster
6.4

Images 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 artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Encenação

—

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Encenação

—

In the Darkness of the Night poster
6.0

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

In the Darkness of the Night

2004

In the Darkness of the Night poster
6.0

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

In the Darkness of the Night

2004

No artwork available
NR

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

No artwork available
NR

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

Fátima poster
5.9

The journey of 11 women while they go on a pilgrimage from Bragança to Fatima.

Fátima

2017

Fátima poster
5.9

The journey of 11 women while they go on a pilgrimage from Bragança to Fatima.

Fátima

2017

Raul Brandão was a Great Writer... poster
4.0

This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.

Raul Brandão was a Great Writer...

2012

Raul Brandão was a Great Writer... poster
4.0

This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.

Raul Brandão was a Great Writer...

2012

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

As Ucranianas

—

Get a Life poster
7.3

During 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

Get a Life poster
7.3

During 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

The Actor's Work poster
4.0

Throughout 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

Lovely Child poster
7.1

Maria 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

Lovely Child poster
7.1

Maria 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

The Day of My Wedding poster
NR

The 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

That's Love poster
5.5

In 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

That's Love poster
5.5

In 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

Diary of Beiras poster
NR

A 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 artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Fugas.pt

2003

Fojos poster
NR

Castro 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

No One Twice poster
6.5

Director 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

Tarde Demais poster
6.2

A 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

No artwork available
6.0

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 artwork available
6.0

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 artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

A Audição

2002

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Crimes do Coração

1989

Misbegotten poster
5.2

Lúcia 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

Misbegotten poster
5.2

Lúcia 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

Black Shoes poster
5.1

In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.

Black Shoes

1998

Black Shoes poster
5.1

In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.

Black Shoes

1998