The Nothing Factory

Pedro Pinho belongs to Terratreme, the Lisbon film collective that has, without much fanfare, become one of the most inventive production houses in European cinema. The Nothing Factory, his first solo fiction feature, was made collectively over several years with a cast built largely from real factory workers, and premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2017, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. It came out of the austerity years that hollowed out Portugal's industrial economy, and it is steeped in that experience.

The setup is simple: workers at a lift factory on the edge of Lisbon discover that management is stripping the plant, and they respond by occupying it. The film that grows from it is not simple at all. Across nearly three hours Pinho moves between observational drama, long political debates in canteens and bars, the private lives of the workers and sudden leaps into other registers, including a full-blown musical number. It plays as a documentary of one particular strike and also as an essay on what work means when the work disappears.

Critics compared it to the militant cinema of the 1970s and to Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights, and it won Sophia Awards for its editing and screenplay. It is demanding, funny and generous with its characters, one of the most important Portuguese films of its decade, and a political film that trusts its audience to argue back.