L'homme sans ombre

Why bother dragging around one's shadow? A man agrees to a pact with a magician and swaps his shadow for riches. He soon discovers that the absence of a shadow can be a humiliating handicap. After fleeing to the far corners of the earth, he ends up in Bali, in a theatre of shadow puppets, where he discovers the true worth of shadows.

Swiss filmmaker Georges Schwizgebel animates this adaptation of Adelbert von Chamisso's The Strange Story of Peter Schlemil (1814), a fantastic tale inspired by Goethe's Faust. His film L'homme sans ombre is a reflection upon human nature and an allegory celebrating the magic of performance. Virtuoso Georges Schwizgebel's images are wonderfully mobile and textured, his composition formally elegant. (Each cel is freshly repainted with the characters and settings.) He is a master conjurer whose images become a bewitching choreography. The animator's eye guides the painter's hand, and vice versa. A film without words.