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.
Best Director: Official Competition, Cannes 2024
Miguel Gomes delivers a film in which the most complex sophistication coexists with innocence and charm.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Community Partner
Crista Alfaiate, Gonçalo Waddington, Cláudio da Silva, Lang Khê Tran
Portugal/Italy/France
2024
In Portuguese, Chinese, Thai, French, Burmese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Japanese with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
João Miller Guerra
Producer
Filipa Reis
Screenwriter
Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro, Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes
Cinematography
Rui Poças, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Guo Liang
Editor
Telmo Churro, Pedro Filipe Marques
Production Design
Thales Junqueira, Marcos Pedroso
Miguel Gomes
Miguel Gomes (Lisbon, 1972) is a Portuguese film director whose sixth feature, Grand Tour, won Best Director at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Since the early 2000s, Gomes has directed several films that have been presented and awarded at international film festivals including Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight and Berlinale. He is currently adapting the written works Savagery and Cantiga for the screen. Gomes has had retrospectives of his work in several countries and lives in Lisbon.
Filmography: The Face You Deserve (2004); Our Beloved Month of August (2008); Tabu (2012); Arabian Nights (2015); The Tsugua Diaries (2021)
Photo by Patricia Neves Gomes
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Love
This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).
Sex
Two chimney sweeps living in heterosexual marriages find their views on sexuality and gender challenged by a series of unexpected events. In a set of sharply scripted conversations, both men confront heretofore unexplored aspects of their identity.
3 Faces
Iranian filmmaker Panahi and actress Behnaz Jafari, both playing themselves, receive a video in which a distraught teenaged girl, whose acting dreams have been quashed appears to kill herself. Panahi and Jafari decide to investigate...
Dreams
The third installment in the Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy is another rich, absorbing tale. 17-year-old Johanne writes a confessional about her flirtation with a (female) teacher. But the writing is too good to stay private...
Transit
Trust the director of Phoenix and Barbara to re-imagine a WWII romantic intrigue into something unsettlingly contemporary. With occupying forces closing in, a German refugee (Franz Rogowski) assumes a dead writer's identity and flees to Marseille.