A native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thiago Da Costa is Figura's in house award-winning director and producer.

Involved in video production and photography since his mid-teens, his work began to get recognition in 1997 when he co-directed CREATING OUR OWN IMAGES, a short documentary that won the "Ideas in Action: Youth Explore the Media Award" from the National Telemedia Council while he was still in high school.

He went on to attend and graduate from New York University’s film program, where he was a Martin Scorsese Young Filmmakers Scholar and where he produced the short THE LOVE SONG OF HENRY MILK (Wasswerman Award Finalist - screened on the Sundance Channel).

While still a student at NYU, Thiago directed BEFORE TAKE OFF (ANTES DA PARTIDA), a narrative film based on some of his own experiences growing up in Brazil that played in over 30 film festivals around the world and won him 6 awards including Best Emerging Artist from San Antonio's Cinefestival and a commendation for Directing at NYU's First Run Film Festival.

While producing his own work, Thiago has worked for years in video production and post-production for clients in New York City, Chicago, Europe and Brazil. His client work has been broadcast on FOX, France 24, HBO, Fashion TV, VH1, ARTE, The Speed Channel and A&E amongst other stations.

In early 2008, he began working as a director of photography on MORE THAN A MONTH, an ITVS-funded and PBS-bound documentary about the social effects of Black History Month in the social fabric fo the USA. The film is slated for a PBS broadcast in early 2011.

In April of 2009, he began a fruitful collaboration with Vice Magazine's Web Documentary Channel, VBS, and went down to Brazil to shoot a series of seven documentaries for them. The highlight of this initial collaboration was the feature THE SAPO DIARIES, which he also edited and can be seen here in its entirety. Later that year, he shot and edited the pilot for the new VBS show, Munchies, featuring New York City power chef, David Chang. In December of 2009, he returned to Brazil with a VBS crew to produce and shoot a series of documentaries about artists for Vice Magazine and Intel's THE CREATORS PROJECT. Three of these docs can be seen and the following links: Amapô, Muti Randolph and Ricardo Carioba. After his return, Thiago also did some editing work on the James Powderly Creators video profile.

Thiago has recently edited ROOFTOP WARS and MANBIRD two short films directed by Miguel Silveira that are currently making their way through the festival circuit.

He is now working working as director-producer on two documentries: ERICH FROMM: THE COURAGE TO BE HUMAN and DARYL DAVIS: A KLOSET FULL OF KLAN ROBES. Additionally, he will soon direct GASP!, his return to the fiction genre as writer-director after many years of documentary work.