João ribeiro
BIO
A cinematographer working in documentary and in feature length fiction films. Since 1993, he has made the photography of more than fifty films (documentary and feature), some of them Portuguese co-production. He works a lot in Africa (18 docs and 3 features: Benin, Mali, Egypt, Angola, Mozambique, Cabo-Verde, among others). France, Germany, Sweden, USA, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Oman, Australia - among others are the most important places of past projects.

His name is linked to a new generation of Portuguese directors who developed Portuguese Documentary Film in the beginning of the 90’s. He co-directed and was the cinematographer of his first documentary “In Between Walls”, selected for several festivals (Cinema du Réel, Festival dei Popoli, Bilbao Documentary Festival, etc). In 1999 he started working in fiction film. First feature fiction “Nights” by Claudia Tomaz received Grand Prix at Gijón International Film Festival and Cult Network Italia Prize in Critics’ Week of Venice Film Festival (“the quality of telling a story with just the expression of the image” as Marco Bellochio, president of the jury, justifies their choice). In 2003, he received the Best cinematography award in Doc Lisboa for the film “Restless” by Catarina Mourao.

In 2007 he was attributed two more awards of Best cinematography (VIII European Cinema Festival, Lecce, Italy and Cineport Festival, João Pessoa, Brazil) for the feature film “Transe” by Teresa Villaverde. A Corte do Norte (Northern Land) by Joao Botelho was selected for the New York Film Festival and won a Special jury award at Rome Film Festival. His last films: “Letters from War” by Ivo Ferreira was in Berlinale’s Main Competition in 2016 and many other festivals; “The Tree /Drvo” by Andre Gil Mata was in Berlinale’s Panorama in 2017. Both films, together with other mentioned feature film has won numerous awards for direction, acting, production design etc. About 20 awards were received for Best cinematography. His work is commented in magazines such as Variety, Hollywood Report, Sight and Sound, Indie Wire, etc. The feature “Scales” by Shahad Ameen won an award in Venice Film Festival 2019; Critics’ Week - Verona Film Club Award. He teaches cinematography at Zelig School for Documentary and New Media in Bolzano, Italy and DocNomads in Lisbon. He has done master classes in Belgrade (Serbia), Espinho Film Fest (Portugal), Maison Cinema in Geneva (Switzerland), etc. His new projects of feature films are João Mário Grilo and Marco Martins. In development feature films from Ermela Teli, Andrija Stojkovic, M. Cem Oztufekci. He’s a member of EFA (European Film Academy) since 2017.