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Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a bored and lonely Conneticut-based college professor in The Visitor. Having held the same role for the past 20 years, he moves through life in a slow-motion replay of the day before. Teaching one class a week, with the excuse of working on his fourth book, Walter’s love of music keeps him afloat in the sea of grey banality. He loses himself nightly in classical music, whilst making clumsy attempts at learning the piano. When he is told that he must present an academic paper at a conference in New York, Walter turns up at his Manhattan apartment to discover two strangers living there. Tarak, a Syrian man, and Zainab, his Senegalese girlfriend, make for a hasty exit, apologising for the mix-up. In an unexpected gesture of kindness, Walter offers that the couple can stay. In return, Tarak insists on teaching Walter how to play the African drum. Bit by bit, Walter comes alive again to the beat of the drum as his heart restores faith in the world. However, when Tarak is unexpectedly arrested in a subway station and Tarak’s mother turns up on the doorstep, Walter finds that, for the first time in a very long time, he has found something and someone to care about. Directed by Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) and written by Michael London (Sideways), The Visitor is a small film about big things and one that will stay in your heart long after you’ve left the movie theatre.