Film The Traveller / Le Voyageur by Ghandour

London Film School graduate Hadi Ghandour steps into the realm of feature filmmaking after directing and producing "Americans", a series of documentaries about the USA. His interest in cultures and his experience living abroad are key elements in the successful development of his debut “The Traveller".

Adnan is a travel agent in a small Lebanese village. He can describe every destination in the vacation packages he sells but, as irony of fate, he has never left Lebanon or been on a plane himself. Married with a child, he lives with the desire of eating a “gelato” in Rome or smelling hot dogs and roasted nuts in New York. One day his dream of travelling abroad turns into reality: his boss George breaks his leg dancing at a friend’s wedding and he has to replace him at an important 5-days travel conference in Paris, where many international deals are inked every year. Adnan is ecstatic at the idea that he will soon travel to France but his wife is afraid of what he may find. Her worries go by the name of Layla, Adnan’s young, sexy second cousin: he meets her while visiting his cousin Insaf, an overprotective, old-fashioned divorcée, nostalgic of her homeland.

Those who stay want to leave and those who left dream of going back. It’s always what we don’t have that attracts us the most and it is no different for Adnan, a modern Odysseus, the symbol of this human dichotomy: a man torn between the love for his family and the lust for knowledge.