Voyager

Voyager is a 1991 English-language drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and starring Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, and Barbara Sukowa. Adapted by screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer from the 1957 novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch, the film is about a successful engineer traveling throughout Europe and the Americas whose world view based on logic, probability, and technology is challenged when he falls victim to fate, or a series of incredible coincidences. Voyager won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Production (Eberhard Junkersdorf), the German Film Award for Shaping of a Feature Film, and the Guild of German Art House Cinemas Award for Best German Film. It was also nominated for three European Film Awards for Best Film, Best Actress (Julie Delpy), and Best Supporting Actress (Barbara Sukowa), as well as a German Film Award for Outstanding Feature Film. Plot In April 1957, engineer Walter Faber is waiting to board a flight from Caracas, Venezuela to New York City when he meets a German, Herbert Hencke, who reminds him of an old friend. Before takeoff, Walter decides not to board the airplane, but when a flight attendant discovers him still in the terminal, she escorts him aboard. During the flight, the airplane develops engine trouble and crash lands in the desert near the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains. While the passengers and crew wait to be rescued, Walter discovers that Herbert Hencke is the brother of his old friend, Joachim, whom Walter has not seen since he left Zürich, Switzerland, twenty years ago. He also learns that Joachim married Walter's former girlfriend Hannah, that they had a child together, and that they are now divorced. After writing a letter to his current married girlfriend, Ivy, ending their relationship, Walter thinks back on his days in Zurich falling in love with Hannah. He remembers proposing marriage to her after she revealed she was pregnant, and that she refused, saying she would terminate the pregnancy.