Miguel Gomes was born in Lisbon in 1972. He studied at the Lisbon Film and Theatre School and between 1996 and 2000 worked as film critic for the Portuguese press. He directed several short films awarded in festivals such as Oberhausen, Belfort and Vila do Conde, and screened at Locarno, Rotterdam, Buenos Aires and Vienna. The Face You Deserve (2004) was his first feature film. In 2008, he presented his film, Our beloved Month Of August in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Festival, which was subsequently selected in more than forty international festivals where he won over a dozen prizes. The Viennale (Austria, 2008), Bafici (Argentina, 2009) and the Centro de Artes e Imaxes da Corunha (Spain, 2009) included retrospectives of his films.