Co-presented by SmallRig Awards.
Note: this screening is free. Click here to RSVP.
In this fanciful and high-spirited cinematic expedition, the uncommonly ambitious Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (Tabu; Arabian Nights) takes a journey across East Asia, skipping through time and countries with delirious abandon to tell the tale of an unsettled couple from colonial England and the world as it both expands and closes in around them. It’s 1918, and Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) has escaped the clutches of beckoning marriage, leaving his bemused fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), in indefatigable pursuit. Edward gives chase from Mandalay to Bangkok to Shanghai and beyond, while Gomes responds with a splendid and enthralling series of scenes that use a magic form of cinema to situate us in these places both then and now, keeping us at a knowingly exotic traveler’s distance while also immersing us in rhythm, texture, and emotional reality. Whether black-and-white or color, zigzagging or meditative in tone, scripted or captured as documentary, Grand Tour is splendid, moving, and human-scaled. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. (Description by Film at Lincoln Center)
TRT: 129 min
In person: Miguel Gomes
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About tonight's co-presenting organization:
The SmallRig Awards were established by SmallRig to recognize and support visual storytellers who focus on addressing social issues. We believe in the power of storytelling to effect meaningful change and improve the world for future generations.
SmallRig's mission has always been to provide the public with lightweight, high-quality equipment that empowers them to capture compelling stories in everyday life. With the SmallRig Awards, we are expanding this mission to not only support the production of these stories but also to discover important narratives, nurture emerging storytelling talents, and contribute to a better world.
Open to individuals and organizations worldwide, the SmallRig Awards will distribute 22 prizes with cash prizes ranging from $800 to $12,000. The call for entries is now open, and submissions will close on December 31, 2024. For more information about the awards and submission guidelines, visit the official awards website. Submissions can be made directly on the website or on SmallRig's Filmfreeway page.
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"Extraordinarily playful. A movie to get lost in." —Justin Chang, The New Yorker
"A deliberately ramshackle work made more captivating through its lack of conventional modes of propulsion and meaning." —Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine
"Once again, Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes delivers a film in which the most complex sophistication coexists with innocence and charm." —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"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
"A feat of disjunctive and suggestive montage, it’s a movie that never stays still: traversing time and space at will, vacillating continuously between fiction and reality, and testing and questioning the relationship between cinema and the world." —Dennis Lim, Film Comment
(Available to download after screening date)