MIGUEL GONÇALVES MENDES is a Portuguese film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is the author of José and Pilar (2010), a documentary about writer and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar, his brother Augustín, and Fernando Meirelles. In 2011, after a successful international festival circuit, the movie spurred an unprecedented popular movement in Portugal. Currently, Mendes is at the postproduction stage of his new documentary, The Meaning of Life, produced by Fernando Meirelles, which is considered “an important composition that explores the relationship between death, creation, power, movement and the universe.”