The Nothing Factory's reviews
Media reviews
El País
Pinho (...) addresses the dismantling of an elevator factory, with a deep reflexion of the durability of the tradicional ways of the working class fight in a XXI century that maybe demands new ways of defense and attack. And he does it with a live and hurting proposal, of lyrical style, filmed in 16mm, without any overreaction, in which he never looks for the formal eloquence or the staging, lighting or editing.
Caimán Cuadernos de Cine
Its strength has nothing to see with the media interests or the glamour. Pedro Pinho triumphs showing a group of workers that sing and dance to conquer happiness in a world that has stopped being a world. A lesson of cinema that shows that, despite crisis and self-absorption, European cinema will always have Portugal.
Caimán Cuadernos de Cine
Pinho's film is an entirely free work that supposes a whole proletarian recognition, achieving a honesty in its images that isn't even dissolved in the most humorous moments (the scene of the two ostrichs has a comicality worthy of the ducks from Kiarostami's 'Five') or in the ruptures of tone, structure and form to which the director subdue more and more as the movie advances.
Caimán Cuadernos de Cine
A hurricane of vitality opposes and triumphs over any temptation of nostalgic autosatisfaction, at the same time as an honest look makes its way over the always thankful (and sometimes cheating) logic of the predetermined ideological request. Some few other times, however, the cinematographic images have opened their doors with such generosity and fake alibis to the political debate and the presence -with their bodies, their emotions, their doubts and their fears- of the working class and the world of jobs.
El Mundo
Half satire, half comedy, but without renouncing the sour flavour of our most intimate tragedy, the film can be read as a reacusation of these times of crises, postcrises or antecrises. But that, being obvious, is short. The filmmaker manages to put everything backwards to discuss both the rules of each cinematographic gender and the society itself, not so much the consume society as simply consumed.
El Periódico
Is a film truly political, in times in which it's really difficult to find a political cinema, which explains well the uprising of some workers before the corruption of the administrators of their factory and besides, it's done with an overstanding variety of aesthetic styles, from pause to direct agitation.
Fotogramas
Sometimes meditative, sometimes angry, sometimes shiny (it has a happy and orthopedic musical number) and sometimes redundant, 'The Nothing Factory' celebrates in an interrogative way the posibility of solidarity in a world, today's world, that seems to go astray.
ABC
In its three hours there's room for everything, but especially long debates about readjustments (read this as firings), capital gains, market laws and a capitalism that, as they tell us with an assembly eloquence, sinks itself.
The Guardian
Pedro Pinho?s 'A Fábrica de Nada', or 'The Nothing Factory', is a sprawling, intriguing, but finally exhausting film: a near three-hour documentary-style epic in a mysteriously deadpan tone and described by one of its characters as a ?neorealist musical?. Actually, the musical numbers appear only towards the end, almost as an afterthought. The film is more an experiment in social realism, or meta-realism.
Cinemanía
Pedro Pinho and his collaborators from the production company Terratreme, with whom he signs the movie collectively, picture all those moments of doubt, waits and assembly with a documentary-style naturalism, filming in 16mm and focusing on the faces of the human landscape that's being deforested.
The Hollywood Reporter
Unlikely to be a runaway hit at home or abroad, this first fiction film from documentary director Pinho is specialized fare that should find berths at festivals and other forums
Empire
"This isn't always an easy watch. But it's played with spirit, filmed with integrity and is pleasingly full of surprises."
Variety
"A shaggily eccentric but overlong and undisciplined drama"
Screen Daily
"An adventurous, energetic piece (...) The film gets more unpredictable as it goes along."