Exclusive: Miguel Gomes "Grand Tour" and what it means to win the Cannes Best Director prize

euronews (in English)

The Portuguese film-maker  has returned from Cannes with the Best Director award under his arm. The success of "Grand Tour" could be the ticket to directing an epic film that he has been planning for several years.

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00:00A first for a Portuguese director at Cannes, Miguel Gomes' Best Director Prize, one of

00:07the most important at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, comes for a director

00:12already used to the big stage. After Tabu and the Arabian Nights trilogy, Gomes' grand

00:18tour brought the prestigious award, which he has cherished since he was a child.

00:23As a spectator of cinema since I was a child, I started to watch Portuguese films, thinking

00:30this is possible, to make this cinema in my country, it was remarkable, it was really

00:36decisive, and I have a feeling of belonging to Portuguese cinema, I don't know if I'm

00:41going to say an heresy, but I honestly feel more, a feeling of belonging to Portuguese

00:52than to my own country.

00:54Set in 1918, Grand Tour depicts the story of a man who runs away from his fiancée travelling

01:01through various countries in Asia. The film itself is the result of a long trip by the

01:06director with a small crew to the four corners of the continent. Miguel Gomes thus wanted

01:13to combine two facets, documenting the real world and creating another, an imaginary one.

01:24Today we know it, putting a camera in a place, filming what is in front of us, and on the

01:31other hand, inventing a world, inventing the birth of the sun or the setting of the sun

01:39in a place where there are no windows, which is the studio space.

01:43I tried to make a classic adventure film, but working from such diverse materials.

01:59Grand Tour will debut in main cinemas after the summer. Gomes hopes that prize he won

02:05at Cannes will enable him to finance his next project, an epic film based on the Brazilian

02:11literary classic, The Entelance, by Hercules da Cunha.

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