Born in 1958. Directing since 1978. His commitment to cinema has always been defined by the connection and passages between real, fiction and imaginary and, for that reason, his filmography includes fiction titles inspired by real events, such as The King’s Trial, The End of the World, The Eyes of Asia, Out of Sight, and documentaries devoted to the relationship between cinema and the “fictions” of other arts: Saramago-Documents, Proof of Contact and The Flying Carpet. 
João Mário has split his time between directing and teaching for many years now. As a Full Professor, he teaches a Film Directing seminar and coordinates the new PhD in Artistic Studies, the PhD in Digital Media and MA in Film/Television at the Nova University of Lisbon. 
He has published extensively on cinema and contemporary art in Portugal and abroad (namely in Traffic magazine). He is author of several books: The Order in Cinema (1997), The Lessons of Cinema (2006), The Cinema of Non-Illusion (2006), The Imagined Man (2006), The Book of Images (2007), Film & Philosophy: Mapping an Encounter (2014), a collective compendium on the subject, co-organized with Irene Aparício, which was part of the research project with the same name he directed for the Foundation of Science and Technology, between 2009 and 2012.

As a filmmaker he directed his first feature film, Maria, in 1978, followed by The Foreigner (1982), The King’s Trial (1989), The End of the World (1993), Saramago : Documents (1994), The Eyes of Asia (1996), Out of Sight (1998), 451 Forte (2000), The Break (2002), Proof of Contact (2004), The Flying Carpet (2008), Two Women (2010), Your Home (2012), Your Land (2016).
 
Still, as a film director, he represented Portugal, among others, in the Official Selections of the Festivals of Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Vancouver, S. Francisco, Houston, Rotterdam, Biarritz, Hong Kong, Stockholm. He received, in 1982, the Prix Georges Sadoul, in 1989, the Special Jury Prize at Rio de Janeiro, the Public Prize and the Jury Prize in Biarritz, the PROCIREP Prize in Cannes, Best Documentary Prize at IndieLisboa (2012) and the Paz dos Reis Prize for the ensemble of his career in Oporto (2010).
 
In 1990, he was the Portuguese representative for the Oscar to the Best Foreign Language Film. Retrospectives of his work were presented in La Rochelle Film Festival, Figueira da Foz Film Festival and a complete retrospective was held last year in LEFFEST.
 
VIEIRARPAD is the latest documentary in this list. Directed by João Mário Grilo, at the invitation of the Arpad Szenes Vieira da Silva Foundation, following the exhibition Escrita íntima and book of the same name (2014) which brought forth the private correspondence between Vieira and Arpad from 1932 to 1961. JMG's gaze, very close to painting and fascinated by cultural interaction, holds its focus on the art of the two painters and the unusual love story that kept them together for five and a half decades. 
The letters they wrote to each other in the few periods when only geography separated them, are a guiding thread in which the fusional nature of the relationship between Vieira and Arpad is revealed, in a passionate osmosis that crosses their exiles and reaches, at times, the dissolution of their gender. The detail with which the couple weaved their joint legacy for a posterity - reconciled with Portugal - gave life to this film which, “in the sense of staging memory, building the future”, in the director’s words, “was already done”.