João Costa Menezes

Joao Costa Menezes, a London-based film actor and film director, was born in Porto, Portugal. Over the course of his career, he has also lived in Paris, Barcelona and New York City. Joao Costa Menezes grew up during Portugal's "Carnation Revolution," a military-led coup d'etat which began in Lisbon on 25 April 1974 and ended almost 50 years of dictatorship in Portugal. The revolution has had a lasting impact on Menezes's political and artistic views. The year following the revolution was punctuated by social anarchy and power disputes between left and right wing political forces - a time which Menezes often refers to as utopian. The chaos was live and real. It was the most exciting period of his life: the tanks, the clashes between people and police forces in the streets, freedom borne out of chaos, and the pervasive sense of empowerment and fear. Joao Costa Menezes remembers all of this as a powerful moment, in stark contrast to the general social apathy that democracy eventually bro