Following its world premiere at the New York Film Festival last fall and ahead of its west coast premiere at the Los Angeles Festival of Movies this weekend, we’re pleased to exclusively present the poster and trailer for the new 2K restoration of Ombres de Soie, the debut feature of Mary Stephen, a longtime collaborator of Éric Rohmer.
Here’s the New York Film Festival synopsis: “An accomplished film editor who went on to forge a long creative partnership with none other than Éric Rohmer, Hong Kong–born Mary Stephen’s 1978 debut feature announced her as a director to watch in her own right. Suffused with alluring atmospherics and a slight air of the oneiric, Ombres de soie traces the relationship between two Chinese women in Shanghai in 1935; through glances, gestures, and confessional voice-overs, the two women negotiate the tension between their shared wish for stability and the nagging sense that there may be more to their bond than meets the eye…. An astounding low-budget achievement (in which 1970s Paris passes for 1930s Shanghai), this entrancing film evokes the Marguerite Duras of India Song, which is no accident: Stephen explicitly wished for Ombres de soie to be a counterpoint to India Song, from an Asian woman’s point of view.”
The film was restored from a 16mm print scanned at Library and Archives Canada. The 2K restoration work was carried out at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna in 2024, and is made possible by the generous support of M+, Hong Kong, 2024.
See the exclusive trailer and poster below for the Several Futures release, along with a conversation with Stephen from last fall’s New York Film Festival.
