“The Laughter and the Knife”: Portuguese cinema and adventure in Guinea-Bissau

O The new Pinho has two versions: one with five and a half hours, and another with three and a half hours, which is now making its debut here. The length may scare some away, but it would be a shame if that happened: first of all, because it is one of the essential elements of a film that, without ever losing the thread, makes a point of getting lost with its protagonist. We talk about Sérgio: a Portuguese engineer in his 40s who, at first, arrives in Guinea-Bissau by car. The mission that takes him to the country is, at first glance, uninteresting: preparing an environmental impact report for an NGO, on the construction of a road that will affect some villages located in the desert and jungle. This is the basis of a film that begins to captivate with the way it uses the scoperelying on it to do justice to the decorations and, also, to install in the viewer a ‘premonition of adventure’.