The Wanderer

Synopsis
Edouard had everything to be somebody: he was the heir to a haulage company, married, with a daughter. Yet he chose to run away and roam the roads at the wheel of a lorry he’d stolen from his father, a lorry he’d turned into a travelling theatre, alongside Giovanni, an old master of the commedia dell’arte, a flamboyant drunkard who taught him the art of wearing masks. They perform wherever they stop, live off whatever comes their way, and promise every evening that one day they’ll make it all the way to Avignon.
Two unexpected events will turn this empty promise into a race against time. One: Marie, the daughter Edouard left behind as a child, who turns up on the road just before her 18th birthday, determined to get on board. She has idealised this travelling performer as a father all her childhood; now she is going to see him up close. For the first time in years, Edouard performs in front of a spectator he cannot fool. Two: Giovanni learns that he is dying, and confides his final wish to Edouard: to be buried like the actors of old, without papers, without a priest, at the heart of the only sacred place he knows: the Avignon Festival.
And so begins an impossible journey: a lorry wanted by the police, a dying man who refuses to go to hospital, a troupe of opportunistic actors who desert the show, and, hot on their heels, all the problems Edouard has been running away from: a father who has come to reclaim his lorry and his son, and an ex-wife who has come to reclaim her daughter and her debts. How do you smuggle a dead body into the most heavily guarded festival in France? In Avignon, Edouard will have to perform his life. Not for the audience: for himself.
Best Screenplay
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