GRAND TOUR Luminaries

1918. Mandalay. After a long engagement, lowly British diplomat Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) is finally set to be reunited with his betrothed, Molly (Crista Alfaiate). But instead of meeting her at the dock, he gets cold feet and hops on a boat to Singapore, setting off a cat and mouse game across Colonial-era Asia. Mostly drunk and occasionally mistaken for a spy, Edward finds himself in Thailand, Japan and China, with Molly never far behind. Their journey is juxtaposed with mesmerizing modern footage from those same locales, a potent post-colonial rumination filled with puppet theater, karaoke and a hand-cranked carnival. Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (THE TSUGUA DIARIES, AFI FEST 2021) won the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this spellbinding travelogue, where time, place, language and culture collide into an intoxicating masterwork. –Josh Gardner