His body is failing him, abandoning him, plagued by the disease. And so, alone, facing the camera, Hervé Guibert dances and shadow boxes in the same way as he films – intoxicated and despairing, tenderly and cruelly… Guibert dreamt of making dramas starring Isabelle Adjani. But in the end, he was the only actor in his only film, shot with those new H18 cameras that, for the first time, made it possible for anyone to make a movie. Guibert tackles it head on, as he did in literature, in an autobiographical fiction that explodes codes, borders and taboos. In the 1980s, AIDS was on everyone’s lips – the disease was terrifying and those who had it became invisible. Guibert seizes cinema to expose it to the public gaze. Modesty and Shame is a movie made from the eye of the tornado, shot through and pierced by the urgency of the situation, mercilessly taking us from emotion to reflection.

Sylvain Bich
Film projectionist