Margarida Gil

Maria Margarida Gil Lopes (born 1950) is a Portuguese filmmaker, teacher and artist. She has been president of the Association of Portuguese Directors. She collaborated with and was married to the director, actor and film critic João César Monteiro.

Early life Margarida Gil was born on 7 September 1950 in Covilhã, a city in the centre of Portugal, where she went to high school. In 1968, at the age of 17, she and her family moved to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, where she attended the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon at the same time as supporting herself by working at the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa. She graduated in Germanic Philology, although her earlier plans were to study fine arts and become a painter.

Gil began to attend sessions that the Cinemateca Portuguesa promoted, and during the showing of a cycle of films of the German director F. W. Murnau, she met João César Monteiro, who was finishing the filming of his short film Quem Espera por Sapatos de Defunto Morre Descalço (Who Waits for the Dead Man's Shoes Dies Barefoot). Through this connection to Monteiro, she became close to many Portuguese film directors, meeting many of the leading lights at the time, such as António-Pedro Vasconcelos, Jorge Silva Melo, Solveig Nordlund, Alberto Seixas Santos, Paulo Rocha, and Fernando Lopes. Monteiro asked her to be the assistant director on his next film, Fragmentos de um Filme-Esmola: A Sagrada Família, shot in 1972 and 1973. She then left RTP and began teaching and research at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University Lisbon. In 2003, she acted in Monteiro's last film Vai e Vem. Monteiro died in 2003. He had dedicated his 1998 film, As Bodas de Deus, to Gil.

In 2012, she released the film, Paixão. In February 2024, her film Mãos no Fogo (Hands in the Fire), a film loosely inspired by the horror novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, was shown at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.

Artistic work After 2000, while continuing to make films, Gil returned to her early love of painting, drawing and sculpture. An exhibition of her ceramic sculptures was held in Cascais in 2024.

Awards and nominations In 2005, Gil was awarded the Lifetime Career Award at the Rome Film Festival. In the same year she won the Feature Film Grand Prix at IndieLisboa for the film Adriana, which was also nominated for the 2006 Portugal Golden Globes, with Ana Moreira receiving the Best Actress award for her role in the film. In 2012, the Escola Superior Artística do Porto (ESAP) awarded Gil the Aurélio Paz do Reis Prize, in recognition of her cinematographic career.

Films Gil's films include: 1975 - Clínica Comunal Popular de Cova da Piedad (Documentary) 1976 - Para todo o serviço (Documentary) 1982 - Olho de Vidro: Uma História da Fotografia (Documentary) 1987 - Relação Fiel e Verdadeira 1988 - Flores Amargas 1991 - Daisy, um Filme para Fernando Pesso 1992 - Rosa Negra 1994 - A Luz Incerta 1997 - As escolhidas (Documentary) 1999 - O Anjo da Guarda 2002 - Não me Cortes o Cabelo que Meu Pai me Penteou (Short) 2005 - Adriana 2007 - Sobre o Lado Esquerdo (Short) 2007 - LuzLinar e o Louva-a-Deus (Documentary) 2009 - Fátima de A a Z (Documentary) 2010 - Perdida Mente 2010 - Conversas no Cabeleireiro, (with Solveig Nordlund) 2012 - O Fantasma do Novais 2012 - Paixão 2012 - A Esquina do Tempo (Short) 2017 - A que chamas pensar? 2018 - Mar 2024 - Mãos no Fogo