Born in Portugal in 1973, Cláudia Tomaz graduated in Communication Sciences and Film from the New University of Lisbon and Michel Montaigne University (Bordeaux, France)
with the fellowship Erasmus. After her studies, she made ever short and medium-lenght videos, (including Olhos Claros and Desvio - Detour - which won several prizes) and worked in a number of different capacities with several Portuguese directors. She coscripted with director Paulo Rocha his film O Rio do Ouro (River of gold), was director of photography on Camões - Tanta guerra, tanto engano, another Paulo Rocha film, and also worked as director?s assistant on José Alvaro Morais Peixe-Lua. She also worked on editing on Paulo Rocha?s movies and on all the films she directed.
Her first feature film Noites (Nights), caused a sensation at the Venice Festival in 2000, where it won the Critics? Week Prize (Cult Network Italia), the jury applauding the «rigorous style the directors maintains from start to finish, prioritising images over words, yet without being afraid to show the despair and feelings of emptiness that dominate our society». With Noites the filmmaker, who also worked with Pedro Costa on No quarto da Vanda (Vanda?s room), takes a dive into the everyday lives of two drug addicts. For this film, whose cast includes a fair number of non-professionals (notably the main actor João
Pereira and Cláudia who plays herself the female character), Cláudia Tomaz pushes at the limits of documentary and fiction.
Her second feature Nós (Us) won the Boccalino Prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 2003. A film about solitude, the difficulties of communication and the search for love, Nós
places Francisco and Angela in an ambiance that oscillates between the realism of everyday routine and the dream-like power of the encounters of these two characters.
The filmmaker embodies the ambiguous and contraditory feelings of the two characters by prioritising images over words, and silence over language. Cláudia Tomaz focuses her
camera on human feelings and pushes her characters to the limit.
She is now develloping her new film MOBILE. Cláudia also gives workshops about cinema as a teatcher and writes (as a director) for the Premiere Portuguese Magazine.