Grand Tour

1918. When Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a British civil servant stationed in Burma, gets cold feet about his upcoming wedding to Molly (Crista Alfaiate), he promptly hops on a boat to Singapore—just the first stop in an unforgettable Asian “grand tour” that takes him to Bangkok, Manila, Tokyo, and Shanghai, among other locales. More bemused than angry, Molly resolves to follow him, a decision that gives rise to a remarkable journey of her own.

Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Miguel Gomes (Tabu, Arabian Nights) mixes whimsical fiction and documentary in Grand Tour. It’s at once a magisterial continental travelogue, a probing examination of colonialism, and a time-warping journey into the history of cinema itself. Featuring luminous black-and-white 16mm cinematography—interspersed with dazzling colour passages—and a considered engagement with silent-era techniques, it is a film that revels in the storytelling pleasures that only cinema can offer.

Miguel Gomes delivers a film in which the most complex sophistication coexists with innocence and charm.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Virtuosic filmmaking. It’s a movie to get lost in.

Justin Chang, The New Yorker

For anyone feeling a pessimism creeping in like slow poison and taking the edge off any appetite for adventure, Portuguese singularity Miguel Gomes comes like a comet… an enchanting, enlivening, era-spanning, continent-crossing travelogue that runs the very serious risk of infecting you with the antidote: a potent dose of wanderlust for life.

Jessica Kiang, Variety

…an expansive, sweeping work that bends time, space, genre, and form.

Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap