The best travel flicks itch your feet and make your mind race with ideas of adventure, escape, and possibilities. They force you off the couch and onto a plane because they know you can do it if you’ve seen it done before. These are some of the best travel films to inspire wanderlust, make you dream bigger, and make you want to go on real-life adventures.
You may watch these movies over and over and never get tired of them. A good travel film excites me to travel more than anything else. It provides you with the motivation and inspiration to travel to a new location.
1. Roman Holiday
Director- William Wyler
Princess Anne begins a well-publicized tour of European capitals. She begins to fight against her confined, controlled schedule once she and her royal entourage arrive in Rome. Anne sneaks out of her apartment one night. She jumps into the back of a delivery truck to get away from her opulent surroundings. However, a sedative she was compelled to take earlier begins to work. The Princess falls asleep quickly on a public bench. Joe Bradley, an American reporter stationed in Rome for a newspaper, discovers her. He returns her to his residence. Joe rushes out to cover Princess Anne’s press conference the next morning, completely oblivious to the fact that she is sleeping on his couch. Joe promises his editor an exclusive interview with the Princess once he discovers his good fortune.
2. Under The Tuscan Sun (2003)
Director- Audrey Wells
Frances falls into a slump after her seemingly lovely San Francisco marriage ends abruptly. She joins a bus trip of Tuscany, where she buys a crumbling villa on the spur of the moment. After being urged to do so by her friends. She assembles a crew of oddballs and immigrants to fix the house, and during the course of the next year. Frances welcomes one of her pregnant and dissatisfied San Francisco friends. She looks for love, first (tenuously) with her married real estate agent, then with a lovely stranger. Despite the fact that life gets in the way of love, Frances’ wishes come true in unexpected ways, and the Tuscan sun is always there.
3. Into The Wild (2007)
Director- Sean Penn
A bold young man embarks on a magnificent adventure to discover the world’s beauty and splendour. He searches and discovers pleasure and delight, as well as a sense of truth and purpose, throughout his adventures. It ultimately lead him into the wild and wilderness. Along the way, he meets and significantly affects a diverse group of people who, like him. They are seeking to escape or move on from the past and rediscover the joys of life.
4. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Director- Wes Anderson
Three brothers, each suffering from despair, unite on a train trip across India a year after their father’s death by accident. Francis, the eldest, is the one who has put it together. The brothers fight, bicker, sulk, and despise each other. The youngest, Jack, is drawn to one of the train’s attendants despite being split from his girlfriend. Peter abandons his pregnant wife and purchases a deadly snake. After a few days, Francis reveals their unexpected and unsettling destination. Can the brothers work out their differences in a strange environment? The reconciliation includes a burial, a meditation, a hilltop rite, and the Bengal Lancer.
5. Before Sunrise (1995)
Director- Richard Linklater
Jesse, an American, has been wandering aimlessly over Europe on his Eurail pass for the past few weeks. His final destination, which he is currently on his way to, is Vienna, from which he will fly home early the next morning. Celine, a Parisienne, was visiting her grandma in Budapest. She is currently on her way back to Paris to restart her Sorbonne studies. Jesse and Celine happen to be on the same westbound train out of Budapest at the same time. The bond they form during their brief train talk is strong enough for Jesse to suggest at the last minute. That they get off the train together in Vienna and spend time together.
He’s merely strolling around the city – as was his initial plan because he can’t afford a hotel. Until he has to leave to the airport, at which point she’ll board the next train to Paris. If she becomes uncomfortable with him as time goes on, she has the option to leave him at any time. Celine concurs. They converse about their beliefs of life and love as they travel through Vienna. They also discuss logistical problems pertaining to their time together, such as why Jesse was in Europe in the first place. Their feelings for one other, if there is a future for them together. If so, what that future would look like taking into account their differences.
6. Patagonia (2010)
Director- Marc Evans
Two women embark on a journey to discover serenity inside themselves in a new place in order to escape their humdrum existence. Cerys, an elderly Argentine woman, travels to the Welsh farmlands where her mother was raised. They are ccompanied by her anxious teenage nephew Alejandro. As Sissy, a caravan park staffer, Duffy, an American pop singer, plays Alejandro’s love interest. After being unable to have a child, Gwen, a Welsh native, is in a tumultuous relationship with her photographer lover Rhys. When Rhys is dispatched on a business project, the pair travels to Patagonia. Only for tensions to escalate when Gwen falls in love with Mateo, their tour guide.
7. Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
Director- Kelly Reichdardt
The year is 1845. A waggon team of three families has hired mountain man Stephen Meek to escort them through the Cascade Mountains. Meek, claiming to know a shortcut, takes the company over the high plain desert via an unmarked path. Only to become lost among the dry rock and sage. The immigrants will face the scourges of hunger, thirst, and their own lack of trust in each other’s survival instincts in the coming days. A Native American wanderer crosses their path. The emigrants are caught between trusting a guide who has previously proven untrustworthy. A guy who has always been viewed as the natural adversary.
8. Two Days In Paris (2007)
Director- Julie Deply
2 Days follows a New York-based couple, Marion, a French photographer, and Jack, an American interior designer, as they try to re-infuse their relationship with romance by taking a holiday in Europe. Their journey to Venice did not go as planned, as they both developed gastroenteritis. They are more optimistic about Paris. However, Marion’s domineering non-English-speaking parents, seductive ex-boyfriends. Jack’s preoccupation with photographing every renowned Parisian cemetery and belief that French condoms are too small only adds fuel to the fire. Will they be able to save their marriage? Is there a chance they’ll have sex again? Or will they only master the art of debating?
9. In Bruges (2008)
Director- Martin McDonagh
After a job goes wrong in a London church, London criminal Harry Waters sends Irish hitmen Ken and Ray to Bruges to hide out. Ken is an old hand who is captivated by the Middle Ages. he has a fatherly approach toward Ray, who is young and bored but has been chastened by his London experience. When Ray meets Chlo, a cool young woman who distributes drugs on the local set of a movie starring Jimmy, an American midget, his mood shifts. Harry dials a number with unchangeable instructions. Ken refuses, provoking a brawl in the town square. The settlement involves a pregnant innkeeper, dumdum bullets, and a code of behaviour.
10. The Way (2010)
Director- Emilio Estevez
Tom, an American doctor, arrives in St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his adult son, who was murdered in a storm while walking the Camino de Santiago, commonly known as The Way of Saint James, in the Pyrenees. To fulfil his son’s wish to complete the voyage, Tom resolves to embark on the historical pilgrimage rather than return home. What Tom doesn’t anticipate is the journey’s tremendous impact on him and his “California Bubble Life.” Tom, a novice hiker, quickly learns that he will not be alone on this adventure.
Tom encounters other pilgrims from all over the world on his journey, each with their own troubles and a desire to find more meaning in their lives: a Dutchman, a Canadian, and an Irish writer who is experiencing writer’s block. This unlikely quartet of misfits forges an enduring friendship as a result of the unexpected and, at times, funny situations they encounter along the journey, and Tom rediscovers what it means to be a world citizen once more. Tom learns the distinction between “the life we live and the one we choose” through his unresolved relationship with his son.
