Ghost Trail

Ghost Trail (Les Fantômes) opened the Cannes 2024 Semaine de la Critique and later won the Best Debut Prix Louis-Delluc for the director Jonathan Millet, who made many documentaries previously.

Having survived a spell in Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison, Hamid (Adam Bessa) is now part of a secret group pursuing fugitive war criminals from Assad’s regime. His mission takes him to Strasbourg, on the trail of his former torturer whom he must confront.

BBFC cert 15

FUTURE Cinema Screenings...

London Migration Film Festival, Genesis Cinema, London , 27th Nov, 8pm 

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PAST SCREENINGS
PREVIEW + Q&A with the director Jonathan Millet on Tuesday 16th Sept, 19:30
Cine Lumiere 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
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PREVIEW  + Q&A with the director Jonathan Millet on Wednesday 17th Sept, 20:45
ICA Cinema The Mall London SW1Y 5AH

Week commencing 19 September

Week commencing 26 September

Week commencing 3 October

Week commencing 10 October

Week commencing 17 October

After studying philosophy, Jonathan Millet spent many years filming distant or inaccessible countries for image databases. Alone with his camera, he travelled through and filmed about fifty countries (Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, all of South America, the Middle East, and extensively throughout Africa). He was encouraged especially to go to the most remote regions. This is where he began to learn to capture faces, spaces, to convey an atmosphere in a few shots.

After this experience, he directed the feature-length documentary Ceuta, Douce Prison selected in over 60 international festivals, followed by Tell Me About the Stars filmed in Antarctica, and La Disparition filmed in the Amazon. He then directed several short films selected in numerous festivals (Clermont-Ferrand, Pantin, Palm Springs, Brest...), including Et Toujours Nous Marcherons selected for the César Awards in 2018, and the medium-length film The Wake which had a theatrical release. That same year, he was nominated as a "Talent in Short Films."

Ghost Trail is his first fiction feature film.

Filmography

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
'The face of a Syrian refugee is the enigmatic key to this slow-burning drama-thriller... it is hard, blank, withdrawn, yet showing us an inexpressible agony, a suppressed, unprocessed trauma, complicated by what is evidently a new strategic wariness..
...there is an extended, fascinatingly ambiguous dialogue scene, in which soft-spoken Harfaz appears to be sounding Hamid out about the Assad regime, or warning him to just forget about it all and move on, the way he has done.'
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
'The sombre, strikingly good Ghost Trail...has the shape of a classic spy thriller...the film steps in with the poetry of cinema. At the genre level, the movie is riveting.'
Danny Leigh, The Financial Times

'Jonathan Millet's debut feature isn't so much concerned with globetrotting spycraft as it is with journeying inwards, to the deepest recesses of one man's psyche. The film's immersive sound design mirrors the furious churn inside Hamid's head.
Though Ghost Trail derives tension from Hamid's relentless search, it also stokes hope that its wounded protagonist might find a way back to himself.'
Gayle Sequiera, Sight & Sound

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️'Inspired by true events, French director Millet's film works both as a gripping slow-burning thriller, and as a study of alienation, loneliness and trauma.  Cinematographer Oliver Boonjing's camerawork is intimate and attentive while a propulsive electronic score by Yuksek ramps up the tension.  Bessa delivers an extraordinary, contained performance as the damaged, dogged protagonist, and the sequence when Hamid finally confronts Sami is a masterclass in controlled, loaded suspense.'
David Willoughby, The Crack

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️'A solidly made, respectfully tactful...the polar opposite of sensationalized. There's practically no on-screen violence, no disturbing imagery, and only a tiny window in the actual experience of the abuse Syrians like Hamid went through around this time. Instead, we're almost exclusively treated to the mental and emotional scarring that comes afterward...That's a much more interesting approach...'
Joseph Tomastik, Loud & Clear

"An intimate study of trauma that plays with the gripping suspense of a globetrotting spy thriller. It's a tale of revenge but also one of personal redemption, based on devastating true events...Jonathan Millet does it with a sure and intuitive touh in his feature filmmaking debut. Adam Bessa gives a quietly powerful performance as Hamid."
Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

"Sharply scripted...Millet’s expertly tooled movie is far from the first to derive its moral stakes from the desire to find some measure of redress for the victims and survivors of political violence, but it is among the best to also crossbreed this familiar archetype with the urgency and topicality of the Syrian refugee crisis."
Jessica Kiang, Variety

'A Tense, Terrifically Acted Thriller About Syrian Exiles in France'
'It's a juicy piece of entertainment that also engages sincerely with its painful, topical subject matter.
Millet displays a shrewd grasp of paranoid-thriller mechanics...Also has a refreshing preference for intimacy and clarity over distancing stylistic or narrative fussiness...He doesn't linger or ogle, pulling us into the character's trauma-ravaged headspace in a way that feels sympathetic, never sensationalistic.'
Jon Frosch, The Hollywood Reporter

"An engrossing surveillance thriller haunted by the Syrian war.
"A rigorous portrait of grief and acceptance that contains the broken and perhaps mended heart of a political thriller. This complex dance of character and plot is made possible by Bessa's performance."
Chris Shields, Reverse Shot

Ghost Trail leaves a lasting impression, especially from its redemptive ending where choices are made to reward the audience's emotional and moral investment. The film communicates a sense of hope for a displaced people, a roadmap to the future, the possibility of absolution."
Ankit Jhunjhunwala, The Film Stage

Millet draws a rich matrix of values that share a few intersections - which the director expresses by having Harr
"A tense drama...a haunted Syrian Hunts His Captor"
Zachary Barnes, Wall Street Journal

'Bessa embodies Hamid with the tragic emptiness of a man who is unable to properly grieve his losses while being forced to reinvent himself in an unfamiliar world every day. Their combined efforts allow the film to marry some of the best aspects of spy thrillers and slow cinema in a portrait of the ways the wars haunt us long after we escape them.'
Filled with beautiful shots that demonstrate how you don't need a single word to illustrate the pain in a human soul, the film marries some of the best aspects of spy thrillers and slow cinema in a portrait of the ways that wards haunt us long after we escape them.
Christian Zilko, IndieWire

"A hypnotizing Adam Bessa anchors this tale about a Syrian refugee living in France who believes he has found the man who tortured him."
Beatrice Loayza, The New York Times

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.