Blood of My Blood

João Canijo's Blood of My Blood was selected as Portugal's official submission for the 84th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category and won the Critics' Prize at San Sebastián 2011, two of the most significant recognitions for a Portuguese film of its decade. Canijo (a graduate of the Lisbon film school and a veteran of nearly thirty years of social-realist work) is one of the central figures of contemporary Portuguese cinema, alongside Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes.

The cast is led by Rita Blanco, Anabela Moreira, Cleia Almeida and Rafael Morais; Blanco has worked with Canijo on most of his major films and her performance is now widely cited as one of the strongest screen lead performances in Portuguese cinema of the 2010s. Cinematography is by Mário Castanheira, who developed Canijo's documentary-influenced naturalism through several productions. The dialect work (characters speaking in a regional Lisbon-suburb working-class register) was a deliberate decision to keep the film firmly grounded in a specific socioeconomic geography.

The film was shot on location in Vialonga, a working-class suburb on the northern bank of the Tagus, with extensive use of non-professional supporting performers. It runs over two and a half hours, an unusual length for Portuguese commercial release, and was released in cinemas in late 2011 ahead of its festival run. It is widely considered the strongest single-film entry in Canijo's larger Marias trilogy and a foundational reference for the wave of Portuguese realism that followed it through the 2010s.