As loved as he is hated, it would not be an overstatement to say that David Cronenberg is one of the most inventive and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. As a teenager he began writing short horror stories, before going on to graduate in Literature from the University of Toronto, but only after requesting a transfer from a science degree — a diversion that ironically prefigured one of the themes running through the majority of his oeuvre.

It was during his student years that he became interested in cinema and shot his first shorts and feature films, highly experimental in character but already containing allusions to the intersections between body, mind and technology that would become central to his work. Treating cinema as, in his words, a philosophical exploration, Cronenberg built a career between horror and science fiction by bringing to life to our worries about humanity’s idiosyncrasies and contradictions in modern society. Over five decades. he has more often than not operated outside the commercial circuit and the presumptions of Hollywood.

His filmography, constructed through a lens at times visceral and at others metaphorical, has crowned him the master of body horror.

In this series dedicated to the director — the most complete to be shown in Portugal to date — we screen all of his feature films and some of his shorts, alongside films by other directors that have influenced him, and other films clearly influenced by his work.