Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Pinho’s 217 minutes long epic odyssey I Only Rest in the Storm will makes its North American premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival.
The film stars Sérgio Coragem, Cleo Diára — winner of Un Certain Regard Best Actress at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — and Jonathan Guilherme.
In the film Sérgio (Coragem) travels from Lisbon to Guinea-Bissau to assess the environmental impact of his European company’s planned highway in this epic, scrappy and sexually fluid portrayal of the contemporary postcolonialist liberal mindset. In Portuguese and Creole with English subtitles, the film runs 217 minutes and probes the promises and contradictions of development work and NGOs operating in African nations.
Through the tensions between desire and power, encounter and domination, identity and transcendence, tenderness and humiliation, I Only Rest in The Storm seeks to create a perspective on the neocolonial relationships that Europe (and its reincarnations) establishes with the rest of the planet.
“The film is about how the imperial metropolis — the center — imposes its worldview and its political and affective imaginary on the rest of humanity. It is, therefore, a great joy and an enormous privilege to share it and discuss it with those who live in New York,” said the Pinho, a Portuguese director based in Lisbon. “It is the city which, for all its dazzling brilliance, has in recent decades become the most complete symbol of the image-producing center of Western-European civilization — and its wide-ranging effect on the rest of the world.”
I Only Rest in the Storm will screen on Sunday, October 5, at 6 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater and Monday, October 6, at 4:30 p.m. at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Each screening will be followed by a Q&A with Pinho and Diára.
The film was produced by Uma Pedra no Sapato (Grand Tour, Best Director Cannes 2024; Banzo, Portuguese Candidate for Best International Feature Oscars 2026) and Terratreme Films (Nothing Factory, Fogo-fátuo) in Portugal, in co-production with Still Moving in France (Baby – Critics’ Week 2024; Tiger Stripes), Bubbles Project in Brazil (Loveling, Puan) and deFilm in Romania (To the North). World sales are handled by Paradise City Sales.
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