I Only Rest in the Storm

I Only Rest in the Storm / O riso e a faca

Pedro Pinho, Portugal, France, Brazil, Romania, 2025, 217’ 

A film in which the boundaries between fiction and documentary are frequently blurred, just as its main protagonist curiously explores the social and intimate mechanisms of neocolonialism in a globalised world. 

Sergio travels to a metropolis in West Africa to work for an NGO as an environmental engineer on a road project between the desert and the forest. There, he becomes entangled in an intimate yet unbalanced relationship with two inhabitants of the city, Diara and Gui. As neo-colonial dynamics among the expatriate community unravel, this fragile bond becomes his only refuge from an impending collapse into solitude or barbarism. 

 »Seeking to examine the relationship between power and the bodies of ‘others’, the film immerses itself in the stifling heat, air-conditioned NGO offices, white jeeps, dusty streets, honking cars and fancy parties — all symbols of the expat community presence in a post-colonial capitalism landscape.

A road is being built — an impossible mission, plagued by failed logistics, precarious labor, and power struggles. This road, financed by the World Bank and constructed by a Brazilian-Chinese consortium, is meant to bridge two opposing landscapes: the arid solitude of the desert and the dense, animistic abundance of the jungle. But beyond economic ambition, it ultimately remains a rupture scar in a territory that resists being tamed.« – Pedro Pinho 

Producer, screenwriter, and director of both documentaries and fiction, Pedro Pinho studied at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School, ENS Louis-Lumière in Paris, the London Film School, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In 2008, he co-founded the production company Terratreme Filmes, which has played a central role in bringing attention to emerging Portuguese directors. His first feature-length fiction film, The Nothing Factory, was presented at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, where it won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize. In 2025, I Only Rest in The Storm was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.