Student film ‘Wander’ wins two Campus MovieFest awards

Walking across the barren terrain of the San Bernardino Valley with nothing more than a cart of recyclables and a teddy bear is the lone profile of a young man.As the last shot of the film, letters spelling “Wander” file onto the screen.

For the crew involved in the short drama “Wander,” the life of this fictional character became an all-consuming reality for a week of shooting for Campus MovieFest. The movie won both the awards for best actor and best picture, the latter being the highest award given at the campus-wide stage of the competition.

Along with winning a week with a Red Digital Cinema camera, “Wander” will go on to play at the Hollywood finale in June 2014 and compete in the short film category of the Cannes Film Festival.

“Wander” follows the story of Hieronymus – a young, germaphobic homeless man, played by Matt Severyn, who won the award for best actor. While collecting recyclables out of trash bins, the obsessive-compulsive tendencies of the main character are a background for his interactions with others, mainly a beggar and his young son who are able to bring out the best in Hieronymus.

After working as a sound mixer for a CMF entry last year, fourth-year linguistics and Spanish student Adonnis Asencio, who wrote and co-directed the short, knew he wanted to be involved in the process for his own story and set about putting a pen to paper. The story was inspired by his hometown of San Bernardino and its ever-increasing homeless population.

Asencio said Hieronymus’ cart specifically was inspired by a homeless woman who lives around his neighborhood and has been selling corn from her cart for the past 13 years.

A rough idea of “Wander” had been on his mind for a couple of years and Asencio said to see it come together during production was amazing.

“[The collaboration of] all of these like-minded people around me to get my story out was incredible. They want exactly what you want,” Asencio said.

Selected for the starring role of Hieronymus, Severyn was found through the LA Casting website and said he almost missed his audition for the role because of confusion over UCLA parking structures.

Nevertheless, Asenio saw something special in his portrayal of the role.

“I felt his emotion and it gave me goosebumps,” Asencio said.

Margaux Moores-Tanvier, a third-year political science student and current news contributor for the Daily Bruin, was co-director and cinematographer for “Wander.” Although unable to attend the casting auditions, Moores-Tanvier said she saw in the tapes that Severyn brought new life to a character with a mental illness.

Severyn attributes his success in large part to the crew. He said he was impressed by the professional atmosphere of the entire production company from top to bottom.

Growing up in big cities, Severyn said he was easily able to connect to Asencio’s story.

“I was with emergency services for seven years and have gotten to interact directly with the community. … An actor’s greatest gift is a capacity for empathy and being able to understand another person’s story, no matter who they are,” Severyn said.

Severyn said, for him, the story was about more than homelessness in Los Angeles; it was about being a human being.

The film is also a contender for the Elfenworks Social Justice prize, something both Moores-Tanvier and Asencio have high hopes for and attribute to the collaborative efforts put in by both the crew and cast.

“Homelessness is a big issue in Los Angeles in particular. It’s really important to me to get the message out there,” Moores-Tanvier said. “Homeless people deserve to be treated as people.”

While the letters spelling “Wander” once again filed across the screen Thursday evening, this time for best picture, Moores-Tanvier said it made driving to San Bernardino before sunrise to film “Wander” worth it. Asencio said after not winning the award for best drama he was devastated. He never expected to win best picture. He simply started screaming.