CineTributes: Leonardo Simoes
Since starting his film career in the late 1990s, Leonardo Simoes has risen from a virtual nobody to one of the global film industry's most distinctive and most talented DPs. His first feature-length production was in 2003, but it would be 2006's Colossal Youth that would change everything. That was the first time he worked with director Pedro Costa, who'd already established a personal aesthetic for his films, something which Simoes has since only enriched. The two work together to create glorious cloistered compositions, with excellent focus work, subtle optical illusions, and chiaroscuro that practically closes the book on the technique - it really just doesn't get any better.
Simoes has also brought his talents as cinematographer to other projects within his native Portugal, some of which are featured alongside the inevitable Costa cuts in today's Screen On Screen CineTribute montage. Whether with or without Costa, I'll always be on the lookout for whatever visual masterpiece Leonardo Simoes has next on his slate, and the video above ought to prove exactly why.
Films featured
Colossal Youth, 2006
This Side of Resurrection, 2011
Sweet Exorcism, 2012
The Invisible Life, 2013
Horse Money, 2014
Coracao Negro, 2017
Vitalina Varela, 2019