FRANCISCO VILLA-LOBOS

Lisbon, 1966

Francisco Villa-Lobos graduated in Film Production in 1989 at the Lisbon Film School, where he attended classes by José Bogalheiro, Paulo Rocha and António Reis.
In his early career, he worked as Assistant Director to Manoel de Oliveira, Raúl Ruiz, João Mário Grilo and Vicente-Jorge Silva amongst others. In 1993 he opened Contracosta: an audacious, independent and versatile production unit, aimed at giving its film directors total creative freedom whilst providing each project with the most adequate production means, financing and time span.

In 2003 he opened Les Films de l’Étranger in Paris with producer Philippe Avril and worked simultaneously in France and Portugal always imprinting his international productions with the same work philosophy that he began in Contracosta.
Producer of several films by Pedro Costa, Luís Fonseca, Edgar Pêra, Lorenzo Bianchini, Vimukhti Jayasundara and Wang Bing amongst many others, his work has been acclaimed by critics, presented in many of the major International Film Festivals, and published worldwide by the most prestigious film and DVD distributors.

In 2013, feeling he had reached the end of this professional and personal road, he abandoned the world of cinema and settled in Italy, dedicating himself to a completely different set of activities.
While on vacation in Portugal in 2018, he accepted the challenge given to him by the Cascais School of the Arts, to run the school’s Film Studies Department, where he teaches Film Production, Film Financing and Film Production History.