Director Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos dies

Portuguese director António-Pedro Vasconcelos died this Wednesday at the age of 84 in Lisbon. The family announced the news in a statement.

“The family of Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos announces that our A-PV took off this evening, just a few days before completing 85 years of a wonderful life,” the statement said.

Director, producer, critic, teacher and founder of Centro Português de Cinema was born on March 10, 1939 in Leiria. He would have turned 85 on Sunday.

In addition to cinema, where he achieved several box office successes, Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos was also a literary and film critic, columnist and television commentator, “with a strong civic involvement,” as José Jorge Letria wrote in a book of interviews with the director. : “A film director doomed to freedom.”

One of the fields of intervention was the Peso a Palavra Association, which publicly fought against the privatization of TAP.

“Today, more than ever, we are confident that our A-PW, who fought so hard for us all to be more just, more correct, more aware, always as serious and worthy as he was, will always be Immortal,” – the family wrote in a statement.

His first feature film was Perdido por Cem in 1973. This was followed by the documentary “Adeus Until Meu Regresso”, released in 1974, the film “Oxalá” in 1981 and “O Lugar do Dead” in 1984. the latter has been one of the biggest hits of Portuguese cinema for many years.

In 1999, the feature film “Jaime,” which reveals the problem of exploitation of child labor, received a special jury prize at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos’s most recent productions were Park Mayer (2018), a comedy depicting “unrequited love, small personal dramas and the constant struggle with censorship and clever attempts to circumvent it”, and Kilometers 224, released in 2018. 2022.