Born in Lisbon in 1959, Costa studied history at the University of Lisbon in the 1970s, but soon abandoned history to turn to film, entering the Lisbon Theatre and Film School to study editing and directing. After graduation, this erudite student spent a long time working as an assistant director and cinematographer in television. In 1989, his first feature film, "Blood," shot entirely in black and white, caused a sensation upon its release. In 1994, his second feature film, "Down to Earth," with its exquisite and near-perfect visual exploration, depicted the lives of people at the bottom of Portuguese society and won the Special Jury Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival. After "Ossos," Costa, unsatisfied with merely pursuing rigor in cinematic language, turned to documentaries and filmed "In Vanda's Room," which recorded the lives of foreign immigrants and marginalized people in the suburbs of Lisbon, Portugal. Costa's recent masterpiece is "Colossal Youth." The film, which has continuity in material and aesthetics with "Ossos" and "In Vanda's Room," features ordinary people from the slums of Lisbon, Portugal, as protagonists, using non-professional actors. Together, they are known as the "Fontainhas Trilogy," which integrates realistic creative methods into an exquisite and perfect classical visual style.
The plot of "Colossal Youth" is simple: Ventura, a descendant of African immigrants living in the suburbs of Lisbon, Portugal, cannot stop thinking about his wife, Clotilde, after she abandons him. He frequently visits the slum where he used to live, repeatedly telling the people there, whom he regards as his "children," about the past between him and his wife, as well as the letter she left behind. At this time, the slum is about to be demolished and renovated. Ventura moves into a brand-new residential complex, but the modern complex and the new housing do not bring him happiness; they make him think of his wife, the past, and his "children" even more often, and he feels even more lonely.
The residential area filmed in "Colossal Youth" is where Costa lived in his youth, and the woman who babysits in the film is the mother and son from "In Vanda's Room." Using the elderly black man Ventura as a thread, the film tells of his loss and confusion after separating from his wife. He wanders through the residential area, talking at length to the people there about his experiences and loss. Following his footsteps, we see the changes from the dilapidated slums to the emerging welfare housing complex. From the old, narrow workers' canteen to Vanda's room in the new residence, from the rudimentary factory building to Ventura's blindingly bright new home—in Costa's eyes, this transition from old to new has not brought people more happiness. Although the past was narrow, simple, and shabby, it contained the unique way people in the slums interacted, as well as their life memories and emotions. The newly built buildings freed them from poverty materially, but also isolated them, sparking endless nostalgia. The elderly black man Ventura meets one person after another from the past; they are isolated by the new space and can only sit at home all day facing small television screens to pass the time. The letter from Ventura's wife is a shared experience of the old way of life; his tone is calm when reading it, yet it cannot hide his melancholy and helplessness.
Costa uses the aesthetic concepts of documentary film to depict the changes in this slum. Ventura becomes a "node" connecting different environments and the lives of various small individuals. He is an old man lost in fantasy due to the loss of his wife; he is a symbol of this slum, which is inhabited by immigrants from the African island nation of the Republic of Cape Verde. He is lost in the confusion of losing his wife, and also lost in the changing Portuguese society. He calls the friends he lived with in the past his "children." These people include both white and black, women and workers, indicating that he views everyone there as family. The film adopts a relatively singular form, repeating the old man's narrative over and over. Through his repetition in different scenes, we seem to see the history of living space in Lisbon and the loneliness brought about by this change. This fantastical structure also provides deep meaning to the film's theme: the contribution of African descendants to Portugal is in stark contrast to their marginalization in reality. "Colossal Youth" is actually a political slogan of the Youth League of the Republic of Cape Verde, but this slogan has completely lost its actual political meaning in the film. The title borrows the "utopian association of Cape Verdeans" to reflect on Portuguese society in the post-colonial era. Costa contrasts this utopian slogan from the era of the Cape Verdean independence movement with the real life of Cape Verdean immigrant descendants in Portugal, adding historical weight to the film. From this perspective, one scene in the film is particularly meaningful. Ventura, an elderly black man who is a colonial immigrant, sits on a luxurious sofa in the colonial style, with a typical aristocratic portrait from the colonial period behind him. In this frame, the reality of the post-colonial era enters the context of the colonial era, awakening people to reflect on the essence of the lives of the marginalized people in the film through history.
Although the subject matter is real life, the aesthetic ambition embodied in the film is breathtaking. Costa makes extensive use of near-photographic fixed-position long takes, patiently filming the improvised conversations of non-professional actors and recording their aimless movements and monotonous life fragments. Although it is a film about slums, Costa's perfectionist pursuit of composition, cinematography, and art direction, as well as his radical and obsessive artistic concepts in overall cinematic language, are unique in today's film world. The film's poetic, slow pace and a duration that is difficult for ordinary audiences to endure also make it stand out, which may make it seem obscure and difficult for ordinary viewers to enjoy. But this is precisely the intention of the artist Pedro Costa: art once served the aristocracy, and now cinema serves the white-centric tastes of a privileged life; he, however, wants to serve these monotonous, repetitive, and mediocre people at the bottom. The creativity in the audiovisual language of the film is exciting: the image layers are rich, the tones are distinct, the contrast is strong, the composition is novel, and the colors are full. Using such perfect cinematic language to depict the life of the bottom of society, Costa is the first to do so in both the documentary and feature film fields, showing us that the power of cinematic language has not been exhausted by the proliferation of commercial films. This "slum aesthetics" is clearly different from the calm, direct, and realistic images common in documentaries. The "grounded" bottom of the bottom, the most "realistic of realities" in society, is printed on expensive film with meticulous perfectionism, causing strong repercussions and controversy in Europe. The famous French philosopher Jacques Rancière, inspired by this style, called it "politics in poetics" in his book.