I Only Rest in the Storm

O Riso e a Faca

Director: Pedro Pinho
Country: Portugal, Brazil, Romania, France

2025 | 211 min. | Portuguese, Creole
Subtitles: English, German

Cast_ Sérgio Coragem, Cleo Diára, Jonathan Guilherme Screenplay_ Pedro Pinho, Miguel Seabra Lopes, José Filipe Costa, Luísa Homem, Marta Lança, Miguel Carmo, Tiago Hespanha, Leonor Noivo, Luís Miguel Correia, Paul Choquet Camera_ Ivo Lopes Araújo Producer_ Filipa Reis, Tiago Hespanha, Pedro Pinho Rights_ Grandfilm

A monolithic film! About the world of today. Three and a half hours long, finely polished – a gift to the viewers that asks a lot of them in the best possible way!

Sérgio, an environmental engineer from Portugal, arrives in the scorching heat of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. He’s supposed to prepare a report on the impact of a construction project because his predecessor has mysteriously disappeared. Sérgio feels like a stranger at first, but soon befriends Díara and Gui, who run a bar together. Wide open spaces, the desert, scorching heat, graphic sex.

In this stroke of genius, Pedro Pinho creates a complex kaleidoscope of post-colonial, ecological and gender-political issues. These gradually coalesce into a hypnotic and instructive portrait of our time.

Director

Pedro Pinho from Lisbon is a writer, cinematographer, editor, producer and director of short and feature-length films, both documentary and narrative. His extensive body of work is highly experimental. ›I Only Rest in the Storm‹ was one of the most talked-about films at Cannes this year. Cleo Diára was named best actress in the “Un Certain Regard” section.

Trailer

Screenings