In Windschaduw, van de Staak collaborated for the first time with the experimental writer Gerrit Kouwenaar (a collaboration that would continue two years later in Ongedaan gedaan). In the latter, the poems appear written on screen, but in Windschaduw, it is the poet's voice that recites two of his poems in voice-over. Kouwenaar's verses, poised between the everyday and the extraordinary, are interwoven with the actions of the film's only two characters, a man and a woman who meet and part in rooms whose windows overlook luminous exteriors. “Landscapes both liberating and trampled. Not a single meter untouched. A worn-out forest. A world ending” (Johan van der Keuken).