A movie that never shrinks

What an intimate yet ambitious film. Inside it, it's as if various ways of understanding cinema are constantly stretching a rope, each in its own direction. From this tension is born a film that never shrinks. Based on the experiences of a Portuguese environmental engineer traveling for a project in Guinea-Bissau, The Laugh and the Razor touches on different themes always with a penetrating gaze, without wanting to do things halfway – perhaps that's why it lasts over three hours.

When Pedro Pinho's film (

The Factory of Nothing) wants to reflect on the ravages and current presence of the country's colonial past, it offers different points of view, letting all parties involved speak. When it questions the role of NGOs in West Africa, it also elaborates the discourse, showing all the nuances. And when it combines film genres (road movie, sentimental mess, criminal intrigue...) and styles of visualizing a story (fiction, essay, poetry, documentary or semi-documentary), it does so with the authority of someone who wants each part of their film to be potentially memorable.

In a certain harmony with Kleber Mendonça Filho's uninhibited stories about realities in the developing world, The Laugh and the Razor

can jump from a tense violence sequence to a queer party, from a bedroom scene to a sociopolitical monologue, from a Vaudeville twist to testimonies from real people. And, oh wonder, everything interconnects in an absolutely organic way.