''In Vanda's Room'' ( Portuguese: ''No Quarto da Vanda'', 2000) is a

docufiction Docufiction (or docu-fiction) is the cinematographic combination of documentary film, documentary and fiction, this term often meaning narrative film. It is a film genre which attempts to capture reality such as it is (as direct cinema or ciné ...

(a subgenre of

cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ) is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about '' Kino-Pravda''. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subje ...

) film by Portuguese director

Pedro Costa Pedro Costa (born 30 December 1958) is a Portuguese film director. He is best known for his sequence of films set in Lisbon, which focuses on the lives of the impoverished residents of a slum in the Fontainhas neighbourhood. Biography After comp ...

. This is the second film in his Fontainhas trilogy.

Overview

''No Quarto da Vanda'' follows the drama film '' Ossos'' (1997) in which Vanda Duarte plays as an

actress An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

. The film follows the daily life of Vanda Duarte, a

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a morphinan opioid substance synthesized from the Opium, dried latex of the Papaver somniferum, opium poppy; it is mainly used as a recreational drug for its eupho ...

addict, in the Fontainhas district, a

shanty town A shanty town, squatter area, squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated iron s ...

on the outskirts of

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

. The film's focus is also on the community of the district and its townscape. The film took a year to shoot after the (initially) one-person crew settled in the location, where Vanda and the community including

Cape Verde Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

lived difficult lives. In spite of its three-hour length, the director Pedro Costa made the film in a realist style by using fixed shots entirely. The dispiriting life of the community was shot on

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

in a low-key way. Costa said about his impression of the district in a conversation with Jean-Pierre Gorin

When I entered the Fontainhas area, there were colors and smells that made me remember the things and events of the past, and also ideas about people to which I am attracted. These ideas nestled close to each other, living together even as they led very solitary lives because of violent and painful separation. A form of interesting and incompatible relationships existed in this.

The film also sees the Fontainhas district slowly being

demolished Demolition (also known as razing and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apa ...

. The displaced inhabitants are featured in Costa's next film '' Juventude em Marcha'' (''Colossal Youth'', 2006). The

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...

described the film as "burrow ngeven deeper into the Lisbon ghetto and the lives of its desperate inhabitants... with the intimate feel of a documentary and the texture of a Vermeer painting" and praised its "unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people".

Cast

Source: * Vanda Duarte as Self * Lena Duarte as Self * Zita Duarte as Self * Pedro Lanban * António 'Pango' Semedo * Paulo Nunes * Paulo Jorge Gonçalves * Manuel Gomes Miranda * Evangelina Nelas * Fernando Paixão * Diogo Miranda

Credits

Source: * Director: Pedro Costa * Producer: Karl Baumgartner * Producer: Andres Pfäffli / Elda Guidinetti * Producer: Francisco Villa-Lobos * Cinematography: Pedro Costa * Editing: Dominique Auvray * Sound: Philippe Morel * Sound: Mathieu Imbert * Sound: Stephan Konken

Accolades

Source: Despite its highly fictional nature, its elusive classification and its documentary-like hybridization allowed it to win the

FIPRESCI The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for ''Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique'') is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the wor ...

Prize at the

Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival is a documentary film festival held biennially in Yamagata, Japan ( ). It was first held in October 1989, which makes it one of the longest- running documentary film festivals in the world ...

in 2001 "for presenting life in its near-original form". Pedro Costa collected the France Culture Award (Foreign Cineaste of the Year) for directing the film at

2002 Cannes Film Festival The 55th Cannes Film Festival took place from 15 to 26 May 2002. American filmmaker David Lynch served as jury president for the main competition. Virginie Ledoyen hosted the opening and closing ceremonies. French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski ...

Home video

This film, together with Ossos (1997) and

Colossal Youth ''Colossal Youth'' is the only studio album by Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants, released in February 1980 on Rough Trade Records. Young Marble Giants were offered the opportunity to record the album after Rough Trade heard just two son ...

(2006), is released by the

in a box set ''Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa''.

References

External links

* *
Podcast with Pedro Costa (on the "Letters from Fontainhas" Criterion DVD set, 2010), GreenCine Daily

''Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas Trilogy: Rooms for the Living and the Dead''
an essay by Cyril Neyrat at the

2000 films 2000 drama films Ethnofiction films Films about heroin addiction Films about immigration Films about race and ethnicity Films directed by Pedro Costa Portuguese drama films 2000s Portuguese-language films Films shot in Portugal {{Portugal-film-stub