No Holiday Plans Yet? These 8 Movies Will Convince You to Visit Their Locations
Sometimes a movie can really give you the sense of actually being somewhere, almost scratching the itch of wanting to visit and saving you a few quid in the process.
At other times, seeing a beautiful, enticing or fascinating location in a movie only makes you want to travel there even more. So if you’re currently cooped-up somewhere and eager for a little on-screen adventure, the following ten movies might just inspire you to unzip the wheely case and fire up your flight tracker of choice.
Read on for a bit more and use the links provided to find out where you can catch them on all the usual services.
Location: Vienna
No list about travel movies is ever complete without Before Sunset, a movie that essentially did for inter-railing what Risky Business did for RayBans.
The story follows a heartbroken American (Ethan Hawke) and the most French person who ever lived (Julie Delpy) as they meet on a train, agree to get off together, then walk, talk and fall in love.
All three movies in the trilogy—Sunset (which is set in Paris) and Midnight (a Greek island)—are more than worth seeing. However, few filmmakers have managed to capture Vienna’s timeless, sleepy charms (although, shoutout to Museum Hours) as lovingly as this. It will make you want to get there immediately.
Location: Naples
A visitor to Naples these days is probably more likely to see pictures of Julia Roberts than Paolo Sorrentino. The actress famously came to town for the filming of Eat Pray Love in 2009 and even sat for a Neapolitan pizza in the legendary L’Antico Da Michele—but I'd argue that no movie will make you want to visit the city more than The Hand of God.
Sorrentino’s gorgeous coming-of-age tale is set in the mid-80s, beginning with Diego Maradona's arrival at Napoli SEC and playing out to the background rumble of the Argentinian’s iconic performances in the 1986 World Cup. But if that sounds like a little too much football for your tastes, don't worry: this is a story about a young lad navigating the local streets and his adolescence in one of the world's most incredible cities.
If you liked Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Asif Kapadia’s documentary on the player, you are going to be into it.
Location: New York
The problem with New York movies these days is that almost all of the ones with the money to shoot there are understandably too big to focus on normal people’s lives. Back in the 1980s, a modestly budgeted rom-com like When Harry Met Sally could take you from Central Park to Katz's Diner and leave you feeling like you’d had what she was having, too.
The best recent movie to do this is Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, which was a sensation in Cannes earlier this year and should be coming to theatres very soon. It tells the story of a 2010s queer party boy as he faces up to the responsibilities of middle age in the present day, and just as he discovers that he has a ten-year-old son.
It’s a hilarious and touching movie, one with more than a hint of Harry Met Sally to it (especially in its use of iconic eateries and its well-earned but complicated love for the city) as well as other great NY movies like Kramer vs. Kramer, Big Daddy and Marriage Story—all of which I would happily recommend while you wait for this one to arrive.
Location: Tokyo
Moving a little outside the budget airline zone, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days offers a view of Tokyo that you won’t find on influencers' Instagram Reels. The movie started as a documentary on the Japanese capital's sanitation areas (no, really), but Wenders decided to turn it into a story about a modest man and the quiet joys of a daily routine.
The German director naturally isn’t from Tokyo, but he has a long history with the place and with Japanese cinema in general—a fact that gives his movie both a touch of the lived-in feel of a local’s work as well as the awe and wonder of an outsider’s perspective.
We could, of course, have gone for Sofia Coppola’s peerless Lost in Translation, but Wenders’ movie feels (I think) more representative of the Tokyo of today.
Location: Lombardy (Italy)
With the whole world to choose from, it’s probably rude to have two Italian movies on this list, but audiences in chillier places (i.e. me) have never tired of seeing that country—with its food, culture, and stunning landscapes—on screen.
Another recent movie that’s inspired no shortage of Italian getaways is Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, a coming-of-age heartbreaker that earned Timothée Chalamet his first Oscar nomination.
The story (adapted from André Aciman’s novel by the great James Ivory) is set in the town of Lombardy in Northern Italy in the early 1980s, and centres on a slightly age-inappropriate romance between a visiting American scholar and Chalamet’s forever thirsty teenager. What can we say, it’s a peach.
Location: Skopelos (Greece)
For something with a more rollicking approach to its location shoot, look no further than the 2008 ABBA musical Mamma Mia!—a movie in which every actor, young and old, seems to approach their performance as if they're already a few ouzos deep.
The story is simple: a woman invites three men from her mother’s past to her wedding to find out which of them might be her dad. Amanda Seyfried stars in a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård (to varying degrees of vocal success), but the Greek Island of Skopelos (where the movie was shot) manages to steal the show more often than you'd think.
If you watch this movie and its perfectly acceptable sequel, you will sing, laugh and book a couple of flights while you're at it.
Location: New Zealand
It’s odd to think, but New Zealand really was an obscure place to most people before The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings came along—a movie that might have done more for a single country’s tourism industry than any other in history.
Peter Jackson’s remarkable adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic and its almost equally good sequels are rightly considered three of the greatest blockbusters of all time. As adverts for a country’s remarkably varied landscapes, they are just as potent.
Time for a quest.
Location: Achill Islands (Ireland)
If you’re looking for a trip that won’t break the bank too much—at least in terms of getting there—Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin might have the answers.
Shot on the Achill islands, just off Ireland’s stunning West coast, the landscape's rolling hills and stone walls offer a postcard image that’s curiously at odds with McDonagh's typically gloomy tone.
For similarly stunning Irish movies with slightly fewer sad boys at their centre, you’d do just as well with classics like The Quiet Man and Ryan’s Daughter. If you’re planning to travel via Dublin, The Commitments and Once should also help you get in tune.
