There have been so many coming-of-age adventure movies about teen boys, but many fewer about girls. The new Israeli film, Wait for Me, which opened on Thursday, fills this gap.
While it’s a little slow at times, Sari Azoulay Turgeman’s film is a well-made, atmospheric drama about Maya (Hallel Yannay Shani), a teen girl who heads off alone one night on a boat called the Ladybird, sailing for Cyprus.
Trained by her father (Moris Cohen), she is a confident, experienced sailor and knows exactly where she’s going and how to get there. She wants to meet the cargo ship where her father is part of the crew; her mother believes she is staying with a friend. Why Maya is so determined to meet the ship is a secret that the movie takes its time to reveal.
When she arrives in Cyprus to find that her father’s ship has just sailed, she isn’t sure what to do. It doesn’t help that the engine won’t start up, and she has to try to convince the sailors she meets at the port to agree to fix it. They laugh at her, saying she doesn’t have enough money for the repair, and ask to speak to her father, whom she claims is with her.
Eventually, a young Cypriot sailor, Nikos (Daniel Litman), who is both handsome and honorable, agrees to repair the engine and take her to Crete, where she wants to go and where he needs to go for work. There is a strike at the dock, and he has no other way to get there.
At the same time, there’s another plot involving her mother and brother, Assaf (Ofek Pesach). He’s a soldier in a combat unit who has given up a promising career as a soccer player to do this kind of military service, but he is having trouble controlling his emotions and gets into a big fight.
When Maya’s mother learns that she is not with her friend, and then that she has sailed off on her own, she frantically tries to get the authorities to agree to search for her.
As Maya’s secrets are revealed, her quest takes on a deeper urgency, and the last third of the film becomes increasingly suspenseful.
Shani has a solid debut as Litman displays movie star potential
Hallel Yannay Shani, in her debut, is convincing as an extremely determined teenager. Daniel Litman has appeared in several popular television series, including The Greenhouse, Spell Keepers, Mossad 101, Charlie Golf One, and The Little Drummer Girl, and starred in two recent movies, Victory and Air War. He has real movie star looks and presence, and brings energy and charisma to his role as the good-hearted sailor who helps Maya.
If you’ve ever been fascinated by people who sail around the world on their own, you’ll enjoy this film, which was made by a director who clearly loves the sea. It’s dedicated to the memory of Turgeman’s father, a sailor who instilled in her a love of sailing. It’s beautifully photographed, with many shots of Maya contemplating the vastness of the Mediterranean.
Wait for Me hovers between a serious, at times somber movie meant for adults, and a teen adventure flick, like the 2020 movie The Raft starring Anna Zack, about teens who build a raft and sail together to compete in a race in Cyprus.
But, most of the tone of the film is more reminiscent of All is Lost, a 2013 movie starring Robert Redford as a man who must fight for his life all alone after a collision with a shipping container damages his boat. Wait for Me will likely work better for adult viewers, who will have more patience for the long sailing scenes.