Ghost Trail

"He lies to everyone. About his name, about why he is in Strasbourg when even his own mother believes him to be in Germany. He lies to himself. About his emotional pain (his wife and child were killed) and his physical pain (he was tortured in the Syrian prisons at Saidnaya). Hamid is a quivering shadow who lives only to track down his prey. A body in motion, following another body: that of the man he believes he has recognised as his torturer. Hamid spies on him, watches him, approaches him, sniffs him out, listens to him. With all his senses on high alert, he loses himself, merging with the other man. To the point of obsession. Tangible yet elusive, painful and unsettling, Adam Bessa, who made his breakthrough in 2022 in Lotfy Nathan’s Harka, is in every shot. Screened as the opening film of Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival, Les Fantômes (Ghost Trail), Jonathan Millet’s debut feature, captivates and enthrals. Because this breathless thriller about the hunt for war criminals by a secret international network unfolds without car chases or stunts. Everything takes place in the mind, the skin and the breath of its central character. We never see any scenes of torture; only Hamid listening, through headphones, to audio testimonies from victims of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. These accounts, which provoke shudders of horror and vivid memories in Hamid, are heart-wrenching."(Isabelle Danel; nouvelobs.com)