Films of the Portuguese director Pedro Costa seldom steal thelimelight of cinema scholarship. The specific marginality of his works, thecomplex semi-documentary structure of his films and, at first glance, thesocial nature of his subjects complicate the analysis of his films. This essayundertakes a detailed investigation of his films' structures and problematicsin the context of intellectual development in 21st-century European cinema.Four films by Costa — Bones (Ossos, 1997), In Vanda’s Room (No Quarto daVanda, 2000), Colossal Youth (Juventude em Marcha, 2006) and Horse Money(Cavalo Dinheiro, 2014) are regarded as elements of a single artistic systemthat transforms, becomes more complex and absorbs more and more culturalcodes.The essay defines the motifs representative of the four films, visual metaphorsthat refer to sacred texts and the gradual transformation of the director’saesthetics. It is motivated by the necessity to carry out a complex research ofall components of Costa’s films from the existential perspective: in the author’sopinion, such perspective gives the opportunity to define specific features of thedirector’s aesthetics. The systemic interdisciplinary approach is determined bythe necessity to expose the aesthetic and anthropological problems explored inCosta's films and to define their philosophical basis, using a combined historical,cultural, semiotic, anthropological and hermeneutical approach. The essayconcludes that the core of Pedro Costa’s art relates to existential philosophy andanthropology and that his main concern is spirituality, a theme realized mostadequately via cinema