MARCO MARTINS
MARCO MARTINS

Marco Martins was born in Lisbon in 1972. His overarching body of work spans several fields, from cinema to visual arts and drama. A graduate of the Lisbon Theatre and Film School, also attending Tisch School of Arts and HFF Munich – University of Film and Television, his films have been presented at major international festivals. The feature film Alice won him the Directors’ Fortnight Best Picture Award at Cannes in 2005. In 2006, he directed Um Ano Mais Longo [A Longer Year], a short film co-authored with Tonino Guerra and selected for the Venice International Film Festival. S. Jorge [Saint George] was once again a contender at the Venice Film Festival, awarding actor Nuno Lopes a Golden Lion (Horizons Award). Just as previously with Alice, Saint George was one of the Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film and, among others, the Goya Award.


In Drama, he founded the Arena Ensemble in 2007, along with Beatriz Batarda and has been since then artistically directing it.


Marco Martins stage creations embrace both classical and community projects alike, such as Baralha, a Shakespeare inspired play developed inside and with a gypsy community; Estaleiros, bringing on stage shipyard workers from Viana do Castelo (Northern Portugal), with writings by Samuel Beckett; All the world’s a stage, bringing together a cast of twenty professional and non-professional actors from eleven different nationalities; Provisional Figures Great Yarmouth, premiered at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival; or WILD, with the protagonists of the traditional masquerades happening in Northern Portugal and Sardinia, awarded with the Golden Globe for Best Theatre Play in 2022 .


The release of his first feature film, Alice, brought Martins great recognition. It was not only selected for the Cannes Film Festival but it went on to win numerous awards such as: Prix Regard Jeune (Cannes), Fassbinder Award (European Film Awards- European Discovery of the Year), London Raindance Film Festival (Best Director), Festival Mar del Plata (Best Director, Best Cinematography), Mar del Plata (FIPRESCI- Best Picture), Berlin (Shooting Star), Festival Santa Maria da Feira (Best Film, Best Actor) or Festival de Cinema Mediterraneo (FIPRESCI, Best Cinematography).


A highlight of Martins’ many collaborations with visual artists includes codirecting Twenty-One – The Day the World Didn't End with the Italian master Michelangelo Pistoletto, a multichannel video installation exhibited at the Louvre Museum and selected for the Rome Film Festival and screened at the MAXXI.


In 2009, he created Insert with Filipa César, which went on to win the BESPHOTO award in 2010. Still in 2009, he travelled to Japan with photographer André Príncipe in order to film his first documentary Traces of a Diary, which documents world-renowned Japanese photographers Takuma Nakahira, Hiromix, Daido Moriyama, Kajii Syoin, Kohei Yoshiyuki and Nobuyoshi Araki. This documentary is composed by a series of meetings with the photographers, in which the directors reflect upon nature and the act of image making, telling stories, and on the diary process itself. It was released at the IndieLisboa Festival 2010 and was selected for several international festivals such as Goteborg International Film Festival, Era New Horizons Film Festival, the Rio International Film Festival or Traverse City Film Festival and went on to win the “Premio Honorífico del Jurado” at Documenta Madrid 2011.


Martins’ body of work continues to develop involving diverse artistic genres, as in 2021 Ghost Nature, an installation in collaboration with Fernanda Fragateiro and the writer Gonçalo M. Tavares, or in Jorge Salavisa - Keep Going, a documentary which follows the career of one of the most prominent figures of Portuguese Culture and Dance, that led to a commission by the Gulbenkian Foundation for directing the film Um Corpo que Dança (Ballet Gulbenkian 1965-2005), considered by national critics as one of the best films of 2022.


After its premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Martins' most recent feature film, Great Yarmouth, a Portuguese-French-British co-production based on the play Provisional Figures, continues to be shown nationally and internationally on the cinema circuit. festivals and commercial.


His theater work with the Arena Ensemble has been progressively anchored in the crossing of different performative languages ​​and in collaboration with non-actors and specific communities. The long creative processes of a community nature and a strong choreographic component give Marco Martins' work an unparalleled voice in the Portuguese artistic scene.


In his most recent show Pendulum, premiered in June 2023 and co-produced by Artemrede, S. Luiz Teatro Municipal, Teatro Municipal do Porto – Rivoli, Rota Clandestina/C.M. and the Prospero – Extended Theater network, Marco Martins worked with a group of immigrant women, caregivers and domestic workers, in building a show now on national and international tour.

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