The first film by a director is the hardest project to pull off. Being artistic and true to yourself and your sensibilities is an imposing task to start with, and on top of the pressure, you have to present your work and hope audiences embrace your art and that some studio executives are willing to give you money the next time you ask. Many directors have astonished critics and crowds alike. Orson Welles made what is possibly the greatest American movie on his first try with Citizen Kane, Breathless started a decade long string of wonderful hits for Jean-Luc Godard, and 400 Blows cemented Francois Truffaut’s reputation until the end of time. While some directors find fame and fortune with their films, others quietly craft their art and focus on the content and not the box office.

One such contemporary director is Pedro Costa. While studying history at the University of Lisbon in his native Portugal, Costa found his calling in cinema and soon enrolled in the university’s School of Theatre and Cinema. After schooling, he found himself as the assistant director to prolific director Joao Botelho and actor turned director Jorge Silva Melo; both of which provided the foundation and inspiration that led him to his own first feature O Sangue (Blood).

As both writer and director, Costa set about crafting an intimate portrait of two brothers and their struggle. The referential treatment Costa gives to his first feature is imminent throughout as would be expected by a newly minted student of film school. Tinges of Robert Bresson to Jean-Luc Goddard are present but the feel of the film is not hindered by classic tactics and camera shots, but instead act as an ample homage to the history and scope of cinema. Costa would find his own way in future films like Ossos (Bones), No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda’s Room), and Juventude em Marcha (Youth on the March), but pure originality was not the first item on his list. His first line in 1989 read, “Create Art!” and create he did.

O Sangue is inherently about change. Simple change, no; but instead change wrought through times that are hard from the start. Painful change as brothers Vicente (Pedro Hestnes), seventeen and caring, and Nino (Nuno Ferreira), ten years old and slightly naïve to his father’s (Canto e Castro) sickness and absence must traipse through life while always being threatened with separation. To confuse matters more are the lovely Clara, who tempts Vicente and comforts Nino, and the boys’ uncle (Luis Miguel Cintra) who wants Nino to have an actual father figure. The change is sometimes sudden, the change is sometimes subtle, and sometimes the change is not explained. Watching O Sangue once and understanding it is not possible. Costa is an artist, and as with all art it must be studied, dissected, reassembled, and studied again.

After twenty years it is finally time to see the movies of Pedro Costa on DVD. Within the next few months, auteurs will finally get to experience the greatness of Costa with several new releases by the Criterion Collection, Masters of Cinema, and his debut film here on Second Run. The film festival darling Costa now comes to home theatre and will give wonderment for many generations to come.