Stolen Car Productions

"Washington Heights" tells the story of Carlos Ramirez, a young illustrator burning to escape the Latino neighborhood of the same name to make a splash in New York City's commercial downtown comic book scene. When his father, who owns a bodega in the Heights, is shot in a burglary attempt, Carlos is forced to put his dream on hold and run the store. In the process, he comes to understand that if he is to make it as a comic artist, he must engage with the community he comes from, take that experience back out into the world, and put it in his work.

The first film of New York-based French director Raphael Nadjari is an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Gentle Creature, which had also inspired Une Femme douce of Robert Bresson. The Shade is a drama about a mysterious woman and a pawnbroker who meet in New York. The film begins with Simon, who is alone in his apartment with the corpse of his wife, Anna, who has just committed suicide. In his grief, he remembers the first time he met her, a year ago when she walked into his pawnbroker's shop in Spanish Harlem. Mysterious Anna, who seems to come from nowhere, impresses solitary Simon with her sad beauty, and he proposes to her on their first night out. The Shade is a love story with great psychological insight.