Debut with a clean design about a young Orthodox Jewish student with failing parents and a failing body. He silently seeks solace in long and increasingly desperate roamings through the city at night and a clumsy way of approaching women, vainly searching for redemption.
His shoes are too tight, and that is not the only problem faced by the taciturn orthodox Jewish student Isaac. He can’t concentrate on his studies and prayer no longer means anything to him.
In this intriguing feature debut, Avishai Sivan sketches the spiritual crisis of a young man who does not feel at home anywhere. Not with his parents, who were converted in old age, nor with his fellow students, while his approach to approaching women is brusque and clumsy. Even his body lets him down. Between the pain of an attack of kidney stones and a threatening diagnosis of infertility, he undertakes long and increasingly desperate peregrinations through the city at night, searching in vain for liberation from his loneliness and doubt.
The tightly composed form with largely static frames, little dialogue and sparing yet effective use of close-ups serves to emphasise the feeling of claustrophobia. The Wanderer had its premiere in Cannes, where the film was selected for the Quinzaine des réalisateurs.