José Miguel Ribeiro, born in 1966 is a portuguese director, illustrator and lecturer. He graduated in Visual Arts at the University of Lisbon's School of Fine Arts, and studied drawing and puppets animation in Lazenec-Bretagne, Rennes, and in Filmógrafo, Porto.
During several years he taught puppets’ animation at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. He animated Os Salteadores (1993), directed by Abi Feijó, among other films. He co-directed O Ovo (1994), which won several international awards, and other short animations for the Portuguese version of Sesame’s Street. In 1996, he won an award in Cinanima with O Banquete da Rainha (1994) for the first time. He directed The Suspect (1999), which won the Cartoon D’Or 2000 and twenty-five other international awards.
In 2012 he opened his own production company, alongside Ana Carina Estróia called Praça Filmes. Additionally, he directed a children’s cartoon series, Home Things (2001), and the short-films Sunday Drive (2009), Journey to Cape Verde (2010) and Fragments (2016). The latter was selected to compete at Locarno Film Festival in 2016, and won the Award for Best Documentary at Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in 2017.
Ribeiro is currently working on the animation feature Nayola, based on the play A Caixa Preta by José Eduardo Agualusa and Mia Couto.