At NYFF, Pedro Pinho’s "I Only Rest in the Storm" Brings Its Cannes Heat to New York

 

At NYFF, Pedro Pinho’s I Only Rest in the Storm Brings Its Cannes Heat to New York

Pedro Pinho’s I Only Rest in the Storm — the film that stirred Cannes this spring with its sweeping scope and incendiary politics — makes its North American premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival on Oct. 5 and 6.

The nearly four-hour epic stars Sérgio Coragem, Jonathan Guilherme, and Cleo Diára, who won Un Certain Regard’s Best Actress award at Cannes for her searing performance. Both Pinho and Diára will be in attendance for post-screening conversations at Lincoln Center.

Critics have already framed the Portuguese filmmaker’s sophomore feature as one of the year’s most ambitious works. Variety called it “the kind of film that thrives in a rarefied cinematic environment like Cannes, offering so many talking points that audiences exit the film wanting to argue about it with each other.” IndieWire praised its “big swings” and described it as a “gargantuan, continent-crossing feat.”

A Monumental, Provocative Journey

At 217 minutes, I Only Rest in the Storm is unapologetically expansive. The narrative follows Sérgio (Coragem), who journeys from Lisbon to Guinea-Bissau to evaluate the environmental impact of a European highway project. What begins as a bureaucratic assessment spirals into an odyssey across identities, desires, and histories, blending the intimate with the political.

Shot in Portuguese and Creole with English subtitles, the film probes the contradictions of international development and NGOs in post-colonial African contexts. The International Cinephile Society called it “an impressive film about the corrosive nature of post-colonialism,” while JourneyIntoCinema described it simply as “a monumental work.”

A City as Symbol

For Pinho, premiering the film in New York is more than a logistical step in its festival journey. “The film is about how the imperial metropolis — the center — imposes its worldview and its political and affective imaginary on the rest of humanity,” the Lisbon-based director said in a statement. “It is, therefore, a great joy and an enormous privilege to share it and discuss it with those who live in New York — 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.”

Screenings and Production

I Only Rest in the Storm screens Sunday, Oct. 5, at 6 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater, and Monday, Oct. 6, at 4:30 p.m. at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Both screenings will include Q&As with Pinho and Diára.

The film was produced by Uma Pedra no Sapato (Grand Tour, Banzo) and Terratreme Films (The Nothing Factory), with co-productions from Still Moving in France, Bubbles Project in Brazil, and deFilm in Romania. Paradise City Sales is handling world sales.

With its layered critique of power, identity, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism, Pinho’s latest isn’t designed to rest easy. It’s meant to provoke. As one critic noted, audiences may leave the theater arguing — and that might be the point.