“We are all trying to understand each other all the time,” says Santiago (Leonardo Sbaraglia) midway through Wandering Heart, the second film by Argentinean director Leonardo Brzezicki.
Santiago is a gay single parent going through an overwhelming situation. He doesn´t seem to know what he wants. It all began when his ex-wife decided to start a new life, leaving him to care for a now teenage daughter (Miranda de la Serna), with whom he has a tense relationship. Luis (Alberto Ajaka), his partner, just abandoned him. His mother, Isabel (Beatriz Rajland), and his estranged sister Laura (Eva Llorach) add frustration to his days.
Wandering Heart is a film about a daughter’s emancipation from her father, a man who goes through a mid-life crisis in his quest to love and be loved.
“Santiago is very disconnected from his feelings and the film is a constant search for that,” said Leonardo Brzezicki, adding that the film also involved a lengthy process of scriptwriting, a step forward for him as a filmmaker. “My desire was that the viewer could identify or feel less alone. Just like the character, I am stumbling towards finding my own voice. Cinema is what always made me feel accompanied. In fact, there was a moment in my life when cinema saved me.”
Photographed by Brazilian cinematographer Pedro Sotero and shot between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, the film begins with a gay party in a big house. As the camera pans through different rooms crowded with naked men who dance, drink, have sex, everything seems chaotic. This is how Brzezicki wanted to present the story: viscerally and passionately. To sustain this wild scene the director bet on Leonardo Sbaraglia, an atypical role for the lead in Tiger, Blood in the Mouth, and The Lost Brother.
The actor, who worked in Pedro Almodóvar´s Pain and Glory and plays the role of Guillermo Coppola in the series Maradona, Blessed Dream, stated that his performance in Wandering Heart has been one of the most challenging of his career. “I am happy with what has been achieved,” said Sbaraglia. “It is a film that touches on a world and a culture that is practically not covered in Argentinian cinema. It does it in a very sensitive way. I would like everyone to see it because it speaks to all of us as human beings,” he emphasized.