Born in Guimarães, in 1978, Rodrigo Areias is a Portuguese director and producer.
He began his studies in Management at the Portuguese Catholic University, but it was in Sound and Image that he ended up graduating at the School of Arts at the same university. Later, he specialized in Filmmaking at the Tisch School of Arts at New York University, having attended the Eurodoc and Venice Biennale College programs.
Areias has been building a unique career in portuguese cinema, both as a director and as a producer, namely through the production company Bando à Parte, based in Guimarães and founded by him, which owns more than a hundred titles, feature and short fiction films, documentaries and animation shorts, as well as a wide range of co-productions (with countries like Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Finland). He produced and co-produced works by directors such as Edgar Pêra, F. J. Ossang, Gabe Klinger, Ana Rocha de Sousa, Matías Piñeiro, André Gil Mata, Oliver Laxe, João Rodrigues, Jorge Quintela, among others.
He was responsible for the film production of Guimarães 2012 – European Capital of Culture, which includes films by directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Aki Kaurismaki, Peter Greenaway, Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa, Victor Erice, and many others.
As a director, he has surpassed more than two dozen films, including shorts, feature films and music videos for some of the most relevant artists in the portuguese music scene, such as Sean Riley & The Slowriders, The Legendary Tigerman, Mão Morta and WrayGunn. His filmography includes short films Tebas (2007), Corrente (2008) and O Guardador (2015), documentaries 1960 (2012) and Blue Breath (2018), as well as feature films Hay Road (2011), Ornamento & Crime (2015) and Surdina (2019), for which he won awards at numerous international festivals.