A harshly lit interrogation room. A chair, a desk. In this spare, bleak setting, Refugee n° 214’s fate is being sealed. After a long and difficult journey, head hanging, back bent, he is applying for asylum. Forced to confess, he must, in order to obtain the precious paper, expose his past and the reasons that forced him into exile. He and his sister had no choice but to flee, as bloodthirsty horsemen pillaged and burned their homeland. Terrified and lost, they crossed forests, deserts, cities and seas: a veritable odyssey filled with mysterious and terrifying people, from the capitalist ogre to the snake-passer, from the dangerously alluring sirens to those shivering, omnipresent shadows, like voices from the beyond.

A child describes the days of wandering that shaped his exile, the tragic events that dictated his flight, and the mirages that helped him hang on. With Les Ombres, Vincent Zabus and Hippolyte offer us a subtle, dreamlike and insightful contemporary fable about exile and refugees.