Time, Memory, and the Art of Getting Lost: Miguel Gomes on Grand Tour

In this conversation with acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes, we explore the layered world of Grand Tour, a film that slips between 1918 and the present, between colonial fantasy and fragmented memory. Known for films like Tabu, Gomes reflects on the influence of silent cinema, the ghosts of Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, and the burdens of cinematic memory in a time of increasing cynicism. Through evocative landscapes, missing characters, and a mosaic of documentary and fiction, Grand Tour resists narrative closure, opting instead for a fluid meditation on time, displacement, and the limits of storytelling. We also speak about tourism as a metaphor, the ethics of representation, and why cinema should never preach.