In the heart of Portugal, amid the mountains, the month of August is abuzz with people and activity. Emigrants return home, set off fireworks, fight fires, sing karaoke, hurl themselves from bridges, hunt wild boar, drink beer, make babies. If the director and film crew had got straight to it and resisted the temptation to join in the festivities the synopsis would come down to: the film follows the affective relationship between a father and daughter, and the daughters cousin, all musicians in a dance band. In his sophomore feature, Gomes blends fiction and documentary, including himself and his crew alongside a cast of nonprofessional actors as they navigate this adventurous, captivating work in progress — a charming, unconventional road movie that you can’t help but fall in love with.

Miguel Gomes (Lisbon, 1972) is a distinguished Portuguese filmmaker, known for his innovative narrative approach and hybrid cinematic style. His sixth feature, Grand Tour, premiered in the Competition Section at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Best Director Award. Gomes began his career with short films before making his feature debut with The Face You Deserve (2004). His subsequent works, including Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto (2008) and Tabu (2012)—which won the Alfred Bauer and FIPRESCI awards at the Berlin Film Festival—highlight his unique ability to blend fiction and documentary, exploring themes of personal and collective memory, history, and identity with a nostalgic and playful tone. His ambitious Arabian Nights trilogy (2015), with its fragmented narrative structure, reinvents classic stories, while The Tsugua Diaries (2021), a collaboration with Maureen Fazendeiro, continues to experiment with storytelling conventions. Retrospectives of his work have been presented in countries including Austria, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United States. A graduate of the Lisbon School of Film and Theatre, Gomes is also a former film critic.