Between Distance and Intimacy, Truth Fades

Read Time:5 Minute, 13 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
I Only Rest in the Storm (O Riso e a Faca) (Tomorrow Will Be Another Day)
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Genre: Drama
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 3h 31m
Director(s): Pedro Pinho
Writer(s): Pedro Pinho
Cast: Sérgio Coragem, Cleo Diára, Jonathan Guilherme, Jorge Quintino Biague, Renato Sztutman, Bruno Zhu, Kody McCree, Everton Dalman
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: Stories that work best aren’t always the loudest. Some simply hold a mirror up to our systems, roles, and the limits of our control—and they ask us to look without flinching. I ONLY REST IN THE STORM does exactly that. It crafts its mood out of tension rather than action, and instead of pointing toward resolution, it circles the idea of disintegration—of purpose, identity, and infrastructure. The film thrives in the space between what’s happening and what can’t be said aloud, offering a precise, sharp meditation on power, presence, and disconnection. Be warned, at three and a half hours, it’s not a quick watch, but thankfully, the story gives you more than enough to work with, and the runtime never feels like an issue.

Rather than offering viewers a standard linear arc, the film opts for a tiered structure that reflects emotional fragmentation and institutional failure. The central character, an outsider hired to oversee a major construction project, finds himself navigating a city that seems determined not to be understood, let alone transformed. The job—building a road between physically and symbolically opposite spaces—becomes less a mission and more a burden, complicated by cultural divides, governmental red tape, and resistance that doesn’t always take the form of protest. What unfolds is less a commentary on urban development and more a quiet breakdown of meaning itself.

The strength of the film comes through clearest in its relationships. The protagonist forms subtle, difficult connections with two locals whose experiences, while never fully explained, deepen the emotional stakes. These aren’t friendships or romances that follow familiar paths. They exist in moments: a glance, a conversation, a silence that stretches just a little too long. The film never leans into sentimentality, nor does it pretend these connections erase the structural divide between them. Instead, it shows how relationships can be both genuine and shaped by power—messy, loaded, and vital all at once.

Most impressive is how the film never lets the setting fade into the background. The unnamed city isn’t just where the story unfolds—it shapes every interaction and decision. From how the camera traps the viewer in tight, sun-drenched interiors to how it shifts uneasily through the chaos of the streets, the location is always present, almost breathing alongside the characters. There’s a stark beauty to how this world is shot, but the framing also reinforces a constant unease.

There’s a quiet confidence to the filmmaking here. It doesn’t rely on dramatic cues or overworked dialogue to move things forward. Instead, it embraces the discomfort of ambiguity. This kind of storytelling takes its time, not to build suspense, but to honor complexity. The scenes unfold at their own pace, often without clear resolutions, and that’s precisely where the film finds its rhythm. If you’re open to the experience of uncertainty, there’s something magnetic in how this story refuses to simplify.

It resists the temptation to generalize or make sweeping declarations. Instead, it digs into the intersections of global investment, personal alienation, and cultural displacement with a precise and curious eye. It never claims to solve anything—it just offers the space to observe what happens when institutions collide with individuals and expectations collapse under the weight of context.

The tension isn’t treated like a buildup to a singular moment. It’s the whole point. The film never resolves its central dilemmas because they’re not meant to be resolved. The characters don’t reach epiphanies, and the systems that fail them don’t face reckoning. That absence of climax might feel anticlimactic in another story, but here it’s a strength. This is a portrait of stagnation, inertia disguised as progress, and quiet rebellion that doesn’t always announce itself.

What does it mean to operate in a system you can’t fix, within a culture you’re not part of, trying to enact a flawed plan from the beginning? The final note is not of closure, but of reflection. The world will keep spinning. The road may or may not get built. And the people within these spaces will continue to live in the tension between intention and reality. I ONLY REST IN THE STORM simply offers a lens—and asks you to do the difficult work of looking through it. Its power doesn’t lie in its declarations but in its silences, restrained performances, and refusal to play by the rules.

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[photo courtesy of UMA PEDRA NO SAPATO, TERRATREME FILMS, STILL MOVING, BUBBLES PROJECT]

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