The Blood

The Blood (1990) is the first full-length movie directed by Pedro Costa, and already reveals the lugubrious atmosphere that would mark his cinema. However, The Blood has some formal characteristics that Pedro Costa would progressively renounce in his following films (the sinuous camera movements, the light and shade treatment, in short, all the mise-en-scène that appeals to the conventional artifices of cinema). Even so, The Blood already marks a rupture on the Portuguese cinematographic scene. Before The Blood, Pedro Costa had directed a short feature named É Tudo Invenção Nossa (1984), included in the series Cartas a Júlia/Letters to Julia.