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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Post-screening press release:

SMALLRIG AWARDS LAUNCHES THE GLOBAL FILMMAKER TALK SERIES WITH 2024 CANNES BEST DIRECTOR MIGUEL GOMES 

Los Angeles, CA. (December 6, 2024) ––The SmallRig Awards kicked off the Global Filmmaker Talk series this week with a preview screening of Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour, co-presented by the Los Angeles screening series Acropolis Cinema. Grand Tour, which earned Gomes the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, was screened at the Culver Theater in historic Culver City.

The screening was followed by an engaging conversation with director Miguel Gomes and Acropolis founder Jordan Cronk, focusing on the nonfiction techniques and storytelling tools that Gomes employed in the film. This marked Miguel Gomes’ first-ever appearance in Los Angeles. The event attracted a vibrant audience of cinephiles, emerging filmmakers, film critics, industry professionals, and Oscar voters, as Grand Tour is also Portugal’s official selection for the Academy Awards.

“Grand Tour is made up of a series of journeys: the characters’ journeys, the viewer’s journey, and the film’s journey,” Gomes said during the Q&A. “As filmmakers, we decided to take our journey, to collect the footage of the real people and places seen in the film, before writing the script. It was only then, after having collected these images, that we reacted to the footage that we shot by creating a fiction and writing the script.” Responding to an audience question about the nonfiction scenes, Gomes said that he and his crew referred to these sequences not as documentary, but as “an archive of the journey.” “Sometimes,” he continued, “we shot things that were happening before us; other times we restaged moments of reality that we discovered along the way. I was interested in filming people performing the reality of their daily lives. In that way, the film is a mix of reality and fiction.”

The SmallRig Awards, launched this year by SmallRig, are designed to discover impactful films and videos addressing global social issues. SmallRig is renowned for its affordable, compact, and versatile rigs for filmmakers, journalists, and photographers. The company has a longstanding tradition of working alongside creators through its equipment efforts. Winners of the awards will receive significant cash prizes and the opportunity to secure financial backing from SmallRig for future projects.

From now until the end of the year, the SmallRig Awards is accepting entries of fiction or documentary films and videos under 40 minutes in length, featuring compelling stories that shed light on worldwide challenges, including but not limited to: 

    •      Marginalized Communities Lacking Representation 

    •      Global Warming 

    •      Animal Conservation 

    •      Economic and Social Inequality 

    •      Health Crises 

    •      Cultural and Social Divides 

    •      Gender Inequality 

Participants will compete for 22 awards, with cash prizes ranging from $800 to $12,000. The award categories include:

    •      SmallRig Gold Award

    •      SmallRig Silver Award 

    •      SmallRig Bronze Award

    •      Audience Choice Award

    •      Emerging Talent Award

    •      Outstanding Achievement Award

With the slogan “See It. Change It.,” the SmallRig Awards are designed to encourage young filmmakers with limited resources to think creatively about how films of modest scale and budget can engage with universal issues through a variety of tools and storytelling techniques. “The SmallRig Awards are for socially conscious filmmakers,” says SmallRig founder Zhou Yang. “We believe that images are very powerful. They allow people, behavior, and important moments to be seen.” He continues: “While we support films that call for action on global issues and aim to create positive change, our focus is more on addressing issues constructively rather than taking a critical or activist approach.” As for eligibility, Zhang points out that “the award isn’t limited to films alone. It’s also open to other types of works, such as journalistic videos or even PSA videos. We hope applicants will join us in making change happen.”

The jury panel will be led by Ruby Yang, Academy Award-winning filmmaker of The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006). Yang has also been honored with an Emmy, the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award, FilmAid Asia’s Humanitarian Award, the Global Health Council Media Award, and two IDA Pare Lorentz Award nominations. The jury will assess entries based on storytelling technique, production quality, and artistic creativity.  

To date, over 3,500 entries from 110 countries have been submitted to the SmallRig Awards. The submission portal will close at midnight on December 31.

For more information about the Smallrig Awards and submission guidelines, visit the official awards website. Submissions can be made directly on the website or through SmallRig's Filmfreeway page. 

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