Teresa Villaverde

Born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1966, she began her career as an actress, co-writer and co-director at the theatre of the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon. She appeared as an actress in À Flor do Mar (Hovering Over the Water, dir. João César Monteiro), worked as an assistant to Paulo Rocha and as a co-writer with José Álvaro Morais and João Canijo. Since the 1990s she has directed her own films including A idade maior (The Major Age) which screened at the Berlinale in 1991. She made her international breakthrough in 1998 with Os Mutantes (The Mutants). In 2010 she founded her own production company Alce Filmes.

Berlinale