Maria de Medeiros, born in Lisbon, is an international actress and director. At eighteen, she settled in Paris to study philosophy and theatre. She quickly began to perform both on stage and film. She was awarded the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in “Two brothers, my sister” by Teresa Villaverde. She played “Anaïs Nin” in Phil Kaufman’s “Henry and June” and Fabienne in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”. She worked with Guy Maddin in Canada, Bigas Luna or Wom@rts Ambassador Isabel Coixet in Spain, Manoel de Oliveira in Portugal, Antonietta de Lillo in Italy, Luiz Villaça in Brazil and many other directors all over the world, such as Chantal Akerman, Christine Laurent, Suzanne Schiffman, performing in 6 languages. She also did a lot of theatre and recorded 3 albums as a singer and composer. In 2007, Maria de Medeiros was honored with Unesco’s title of Artist for Peace. Her first feature, “April Captains”, on the famous Portuguese “Carnation Revolution”, was presented at the Cannes Film Festival, in the “Un certain regard” selection. It received many awards throughout the world. She also directed the feature-long documentary “Je t’aime, moi non plus – artists and critics” on the complex relationship between artists and critics, interviewing some of the biggest names of world cinema. Her latest documentary on the Amnesty and Reparation Commission in Brazil, “Bacuri’s eyes”, was three times awarded in Gramado Film Festival 2013, with the Jury Prize, the Critic’s Prize and the Don Quijote Prize. It won Best Film at the Ficip (International Political Cinema Festival) in Buenos Aires. She just finished her new feature film as a director in Brazil: “Our children”.
Maria de Medeiros was invited to be Ambassador by Wom@rts partner Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir.
