The Shade
Raphaël Nadjari
Simon is a taciturn loner who works as a pawn broker in Spanish Harlem, New-York. On day Anna comes into his pawn shop to sell some old objects. She is beautiful, mysterious and crippled with debt. Her fragile beauty moves Simon to the point that he asks her to marry him without even knowing her...
With : Richard Edson, Lorie Marino, Jeff Ware, Barbara Haas, Jacob Lavin
Screenplay : Raphaël Nadjari, d'après la nouvelle Une Femme douce de Fyodor Dostoïevski
Image : Laurent Brunet
Sound : Chen Harpaz, Griffin Richardson
Music : John Surman
Editing : Tom Donahue
Screenplay : Raphaël Nadjari, d'après la nouvelle Une Femme douce de Fyodor Dostoïevski
Image : Laurent Brunet
Sound : Chen Harpaz, Griffin Richardson
Music : John Surman
Editing : Tom Donahue
Production : Filmaker, Tom Donahue, Francesca Feder, Geoffroy Grison
Distribution: Shilo Films
Distribution: Shilo Films
For his first feature, made at the age of 28, the French filmmaker transposes the influences of the New Wave to an American setting: "I decided to stop everything to go to New York to write a film, because the films I liked were, in one way or another, connected to this city. I didn't speak a single word of English". The Shade is inspired by a Dostoyevsky short story and is a film focusing on inner feelings where two characters meet without really knowing each other. "My first artistic choice was to cut the voice-overs. I had written them in and then I cut them out. I felt that everything should be at the edge, fragile, that the energy should come through by itself. I got rid of the scriptwriting trick to get directly into directing" (Raphaël Nadjari).