Miguel Gomes studied at the Lisbon Film and Theatre School and worked as a film critic on the Portuguese press between 1996 and 2000.

He made several short films which were selected for the festivals of Oberhausen, Belfort and Vila do Conde and screened at the Locarno, Rotterdam, Buenos Aires and Vienna film festivals. La gueule que tu mérites, 2004, was his first feature-length film. In 2008 he showed Ce cher mois d'août, at Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), and the film has since been selected for over forty international festivals, garnering some dozen prises. Retrospectives of his films have been shown at the Viennale (Austria, 2008), Bafici (Argentina, 2009) and the Centro de Artes e Imaxes da Corunha (Spain, 2009). Tabu is his third feature film.