The Shadow - Short film

The Shadow
A short film by V.X Production.
Staring Yohanna Awdo
The film ‘ The Shadow’ explores a world where strange and unexpected things happen. A world that is familiar to the audience, but strange and different as well. The film follows a young black teenager (18 years old) who is heading home late from his basketball training, and is being followed by a Strange Hooded man. His journey proves to be very difficult and it is unknown if he ever makes it home. The story follows him going into a small Asian store to get a drink, and then taking a bus to a large parking lot. The emptiness of the store, the street, and parking lot creates an uncomfortable feeling. The fact that he is black and is walking home with a hoodie makes him come across as someone to fear. However, it is him who is afraid and is trying to stay safe. The fear of black teenagers grows stronger and stronger in Australia. We are too quick to judge them as criminals and savages. This is undoubtedly true when seeing them on the streets, buses, stores and in parking lots at night with their hoodies on. Many of us think that the locations mentioned above are locations that black teenagers dominate and rule. They are seen as a threat and we often avoid them as much as we can. It is easy to think, and assume, that they are very familiar with these kinds of locations. With this short film,, We wanted to challenge that idea by introducing a black teenager to a world that he sees as a threat. He explores a world where he is constantly followed by a Strange Hooded man.
The Strange and Hooded man represents a lots of us. We might not know this and we might not do it intentionally, but our small gestures, reactions and behaviours are what he fears and what he sees as a threat to him. By having the hooded man constantly following him, we wanted to show that fear and judgement follows the young black teenager home. He fears us because we fear him. He is afraid of being judge and characterised as a criminal when he has done nothing wrong to us. A Hooded man staring at him as he comes out of the store is meant to show how we see them as thieves in stores. By revealing the Strange Hooded man as himself, we wanted to highlight that he is his own enemy. In the end, no matter what people around you say, we believe that you can’t be defeated by their words. You will only be defeated by what you think about yourself, not by what others say about you. Overall, The story explores the difficult life of being a young black man at night, and that how something as simple as heading home is a huge challenge for a black teenager as fear always follows him.

[@KSisters-ET]

Wow, it's amazing, the colors and editing are great ! The first shot is so aesthetic and the end is so cool Congrats :)

[@soloisbroke7010]

Good Job - Solomon