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
Two Prosecutors
In the midst of Stalin’s purges, a naïve prosecutor sets out to investigate a prisoner’s innocence, unaware of the labyrinthine bureaucracy awaiting him. A Kafkaesque procedural thriller about the pursuit of justice in the face of corruption.
Image: © SBS Productions
Crepúsculo
A brain surgeon (Arturo de Córdova) begins to doubt his own sanity when the woman he's in love with (Gloria Marin) marries his brother — and he starts fantasizing about murder.
Victims of Sin
This movie is a hot scramble of piety and passion, sentimentality and sleaze. Ninón Sevilla plays Violeta, a rumba sensation who oversteps when she rescues a newborn from the trash. This gets her fired and wins the enmity of the pimp who fathered the kid.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
In the Palm of Your Hand
Charming, (over-)confident clairvoyant Professor Karin hits the jackpot when he hears about a beautiful widow whose millionaire husband has just died. But you don't need to be psychic to see that blackmailing a killer may not be his best idea...