João Botelho is a Portuguese director and screenwriter, born in 1949. His directorial debut in a feature film was Conversa Acabada, a drama that premiered at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes in 1982. This was followed by Um Adeus Português (1985) and Tempos Difíceis – Este Tempo (1988), an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Hard Times (1854) set in a Portuguese context, which won the FIPRESCI Prize in Venice. Botelho revisited the works of Almeida Garrett with Quem És Tu? (2000), which earned him the Mimmo Rotella Foundation Award in Venice, and of Diderot with O Fatalista (2005), as well as Agustina Bessa-Luís with A Corte do Norte (2008) and Pessoa with Filme do Desassossego (2010). His 2014 feature Os Maias, inspired by the classic novel by Eça de Queirós, became the most-watched Portuguese film in cinemas that year, attracting over 100,000 viewers. He went on to direct O Cinema, Manoel de Oliveira e Eu (2016), a love letter to Manoel de Oliveira, and two years later released the historical drama Peregrinação (2018). Throughout his 48-year career, Botelho’s films have regularly been screened at festivals in Cannes, Rome, Venice, Berlin, Belfort, and others, where he has received numerous awards. He appeared in the 2018 edition of LEFFEST, where he was honoured with the first retrospective of his oeuvre in Portugal at the time. His most recent film, O Jovem Cunhal (2022), explores the life of the historic leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, revolutionary Álvaro Cunhal.
