Miguel Gonçalves Mendes was born is 1978 in Covilhã, Portugal. He worked as an actor, director, and producer and directed several feature films and documentaries. Founded, in 2002, JumpCut, a cinema and theatre producer, based in Lisbon. It is currently one of the exponents of the new generation of Portuguese filmmakers. He held a series of award-winning documentaries, experimental films and projects on request.

His film Floripes, released in 2007, is his first hybrid production (documentary-fiction), a format the director would begin to explore.

In 2004 he directed the documentary Autografia about Mário Cesariny, that won the award for Best Documentary at Doc-Lisboa.

In 2011, he debuted his project José e Pilar, in co-production with O2 Filmes and the Spanish producer El Deseo (from the Almodovar brothers). Internationally acclaimed by critics and audiences, the film collected awards in several festivals and was elected to represent Portugal in the category of Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2012.

Among his most recent works are the series Nada Tenho de Meu, displayed by RTP and Canal Brazil in 2013.

His most recent project is the documentary Meaning Of Life - a film that tells the story of a young man with Amyloidosis and his exciting search for purpose, meaning, and truth. In parallel, Miguel is also developing the long fiction film The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, the controversial adaptation of the novel by Nobel Prize winner José Saramago.