I Only Rest in the Storm
Pedro Pinho’s 217-Minute Verité Fiction: Reasons to Stay Awake.
Credit: Météore Films (France), Vitrine Filmes (Brazil)
217 minutes may seem like a long time for a film to explore Colonialism, but we’ve been doing it as a species for far longer. Over the course of nearly four hours, Pedro Pinho’s verité fiction epic I Only Rest In The Storm (Portuguese: O Riso e a Faca) observes the effects of modernization on a developing country in hypnotic detail. This film contains gems of humor, beauty, tragedy, truth … and risks putting viewers to sleep.
We follow a Portuguese engineer, Sergio (Sérgio Coragem) on assignment in Guinea Bissau to consult on a controversial road project: some believe it will create jobs, others see it as an end to the agrarian way of life. Sergio’s mission takes him through a sprawling series of encounters with local culture, from imperiled mangrove rice farmers to frustrated construction workers, inept NGO volunteers, even a disillusioned sex worker. Each vignette provides talking points, some richer than others. If the 10 screenplay credits aren’t a clear enough indicator, there’s a lot of ideas at play.
The flaw: Sergio’s character—while effective as an audience conduit—is too painfully passive to sustain the runtime. In some scenes, he simply listens to characters go off on a dialectical rant about history. Even if Sergio personifies “the barbarism of doing nothing,” a key critique leveled late in the film, Pinho demands a great deal of patience (and inaction) from viewers in order for his message to land.
Reasons to stay awake: Despite its excesses, I Only Rest In The Storm achieves something unique—a near-total immersion in West African culture. By the end of the screening, we’re as jetlagged as we might be after an actual trip. Where The Brutalist employed a monumental runtime to intimate the grandeur of one life, I Only Rest In The Storm achieves worldbuilding: immersing us in contradictions that co-exist in one place. At times bordering on documentary, Pinho’s eloquent actors trigger existential questions designed to shake privileged perspectives—the type of filmmaking that would benefit from a post-screening discussion. (If literacy rates keep declining, this may be necessary.)
Audience participation required.
Reviewed at NYFF 2025.
217 min.
Where to Watch: Theatrical release by Météore Films (France), Vitrine Filmes (Brazil); U.S. Distribution Pending