In Vanda’s Room

Costa’s second film of three set in the Fontaínhas district on the outskirts of Lisbon, In Vanda’s Room employs the life of a self-destructive heroin addict as an entrypoint to explore a marginalized people and community living on the fringes of urban society. Shot in an unflinchingly realist style consisting of entirely fixed shots, Costa—himself a student of Reis—reveals a narrativized evolution of the immensely personal style developed by Reis and Cordeiro thirty years prior.