Michael Steiner’s romantic comedy Wolkenbruch’s Wondrous Journey into the Arms of a Shiksa which premiered at the 2018 Zurich Film Fest, has been selected by Switzerland as the country’s submission for the Best International Feature category (formerly Best Foreign Language Film) in the 92nd Academy Awards.

Wolkenbruch stars two young Swiss actors Joel Basman, winner of the 2019 Swiss Film Award for Best Actor, and Noémi Schmidt, and is based on the best-selling novel “Wolkenbruch’s Wonderous Journey into the Arms of a Schickse” by Thomas Meyer, which takes a closer look at the Orthodox Jewish community in Zurich and is sprinkled with Yiddish dialogues. The focus is on the student Motti Wolkenbruch who, much to his mother’s dismay, falls in love with the beautiful schickse Laura. 

The young orthodox Jew Mordechai Wolkenbruch, short Motti, has a problem: The women, his resolute mother suggests him as marriage candidates, all resemble her. They all stand in sharp contrast to Laura, Motti’s dapper fellow student – but which unfortunately is a shiksa – a non-Jewish woman. Assailed with doubts, Motti starts to think: Is his predefined path of a Jewish orthodox marriage really right for him?

With current ticket sales amounting to approximately 300,000, Wolkenbruch was the most successful domestic film in Swiss cinemas in 2018. Netflix has acquired the film for release in 2019.