Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about World War I. In 1931, he completed his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial, a documentary about his home city Porto made in the city-symphony genre. He made his feature film debut in 1942 with Aniki-Bóbó and continued to make shorts and documentaries for the next 30 years, gaining a minimal amount of recognition without being considered a major world film director.

Belle de Jour is a 1967 French surrealist erotic psychological drama film directed by Luis Buñuel, and starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, and Michel Piccoli. Based on the 1928 novel Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel, the film is about a young woman who spends her midweek afternoons as a high-class prostitute, while her husband is at work.