I Only Rest in the Storm

Pedro Pinho's 2025 film follows Sérgio, a Portuguese environmental engineer who goes to work on a road project in West Africa. In the city he arrives at on behalf of an NGO he grows close to Diara and Gui, and the relationship that forms is unequal from the start. The subject is the idea of aid itself. The community of foreign experts talks among itself and the projects advance without touching local life; the narrative shows the postcolonial arrangement not in the language of accusation but through everyday detail. It runs beyond three and a half hours and the narrative is deliberately loose. Long conversations, working meals and journeys are given uncut; Cleo Diára and Sérgio Coragem take the principal roles. Who it's for: those who like Portuguese independent cinema and long-form narrative. Who it's not for: viewers looking for something short and directed; the structure is loose and the sexuality explicit.