Pedro Pinho’s I Only Rest in the Storm [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Pedro Pinho
fiche film] was a Cannes Un Certain Regard title this year with a large critical footprint, in spite of running at a length of 211 minutes and premiering during the festival’s busy first weekend. Not shying away from investigating challenging subjects at epic duration, Pinho’s ambition pays off in this movie, building well upon his 2017 feature The Nothing Factory [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Pedro Pinho
fiche film], a “neo-realist musical” that had a terrific festival run and thrived in some theatrical territories.

I Only Rest in the Storm follows Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem), an environmental engineer posted to Guinea-Bissau, where he supervises the installation of new road infrastructure. Yet despite his competence in this area, he struggles to find his place amongst the expatriate community, and the “wounds” of neo-colonialism, to quote Pinho’s director statement, are revealed. The Portuguese helmer tells us more.

Cineuropa: Did you build the lead characters, Sérgio and Diára, around the actors portraying them?
Pedro Pinho: We had the three main characters designed and written, but I knew that it was only once I’d found the real bodies to breathe life into these characters that I’d be ready to completely fulfil and write their dramaturgical aspects. I wanted the male character to be an environmental engineer because this story started a bit from there, from an experience that I had in the past in Guinea-Bissau, when I was preparing a documentary. A friend of mine went with me and my partner at the time to the north of Guinea-Bissau, where he found a job as an environmental engineer with an NGO. The idea came to me from that experience: this job is so precise in terms of gestures.

Diára was built upon a certain number of people whom I had met before, not only in Bissau, but in other places, too. I have a very close friend, who is much older than the character but who does the same job in Cape Verde. So, I also copied those characteristics from her. Jonathan Guilherme was the most difficult actor to find. I had met all of the people from the queer community of Bissau who are in the film, but there was a long way to go, so I started to search for someone from outside, from Brazil, who could also embody this feeling of displacement that all three of them have. One day, when I was searching an actor's Instagram, I saw a friend of this actor. He was not an actor, Jonathan [Guilherme], but I started following him, and I was totally in love.

I hear more and more directors talk about Instagram’s value for these sorts of roles, compared to traditional listings and databases.
I do a lot of casting on Instagram. I only created my account to cast!

Could you expand on how the film depicts the ongoing inequality between Europe and Africa, and how that’s facilitated by modern capitalism? I suppose it’s realistic to show that the efforts of the NGO are all in vain.
That’s one of the central themes of the film – the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world, and Europe’s global dominance and hegemony. I think it’s perpetuated in several ways, one of them being the power that Europe and the West wield by means of international co-operation – the NGOs, the building of infrastructure, all of that. It’s not about the fact that these infrastructures are much needed and very important, but about the way the relationship perpetuates what we could call neo-colonialism. I wanted to look at the mechanisms of that in the film and look at the characters in this environment.

How does Sérgio’s sexual identity and fluidity – his bisexuality – connect to everything else he’s going through with his challenging job? I think it’s a mystery to the audience, and also to him.
There is a direct link in that these imbalances of power are hidden. They are always somehow linked to desire as well. And it's not difficult to find expatriates who comment on the ease of access to bodies. This creates a very strong impression on the people who go there to work. Again, I sought this community of people who go to work in NGOs and who are much like me, in their beliefs and in their moral and ethical system. But they find themselves in a situation where this is a very strong element. The fact that you are also displaced creates a sense of freedom and liberation that’s connected to sexuality.

What were your inspirations for the film’s mise-en-scène?
We shot on 35 mm. The Nothing Factory was shot on 16 mm, but that had some limitations in terms of framing and in terms of the space. Shooting inside close up, in tight spaces, is more difficult because of the perspective of the lenses. So I wanted to try 35 mm and thought that filming with two perforations would be more economical, but could also give us this view of the landscape and its presence.