‘W hat disgusts me the most are good men,” says a Bissau-Guinean sex worker to Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem), a Portuguese environmental engineer working for an NGO on a road construction project in the country. He’s struggling to perform, as if his private life is letting slip some fundamental doubt about his role in Africa .

There’s a good dose of self-flagellation about western paternalism and hypocrisy in Pedro Pinho’s fifth feature, but it’s smart enough to know that this hand-wringing, extended over three hours, is yet another form of white man’s privilege. First seen driving through a sand blizzard like one of Antonioni’s existential wanderers, Sérgio seems to want to avoid thinking about the power dynamics at play around him. Being “here now”, in the moment, is his superpower – as he

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