Cannes Film Festival 2024, Toronto International Film Festival 2024, BFI London Film Festival 2024
Winner: Best Director, Cannes Film Festival 2024
In 1917, British diplomat Edward is stationed in Burma and travels by train from Rangoon to Mandalay, where Molly, his fiancée of seven years, is finally arriving to join him. But before her steamship can dock, Edward loses his nerve and flees on the next boat to Singapore. This doesn’t deter the exuberant Molly, who promptly sets off after her cowardly bridegroom. He leads Molly on a chase through Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, Osaka, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu and onwards – even through history, transcending storytelling itself. This stunning cinematic essay on place and memory is much grander in scope than Edward and Molly’s journey; it demands to be experienced moment to moment.
Miguel Gomes lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. After starting his career as a film critic, Miguel Gomes directed a series of short films, followed by his first feature film in 2004, La Gueule que tu mérites. His fame grew internationally in 2012 with his film Tabu, which won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Two years later, his ambitious trilogy of The Arabian Nights transposed thr structure and form of the tale with acerbic irony to contemporary Portugal. Drawing on popular imaginaries, his works are marked by the blurring of documentary and fiction that defines his style as a whole.
MUBI