Ghost Trail

A former detainee of the brutal Syrian regime tracks down the man he believes to be his torturer. In Jonathan Millet’s quietly intense thriller set in Strasbourg, justice is personal, but must be carried out with razor-sharp accuracy.

Hamid is a member of an underground organisation spread across Europe dedicated to finding fugitive war criminals from the Syrian government. Having also lost his wife and young daughter, Hamid was once tortured in the government’s notorious Sednaya Prison near Damascus, adding to his personal commitment to the cause. Now in Strasbourg, the quietly determined Syrian man believes he has located his former torturer, known for performing abhorrent acts on detainees with their heads covered. But is it really the evil-doer he is looking for, or is Hamid just hungry to catch a killer?

Told entirely from the narrative vantage point of its protagonist, Jonathan Millet’s personally affective Ghost Trail will hold your breath hostage and keep you guessing the whole way through. Millet’s documentary background shines through in the film’s confident minimalism, which – rather than fixating on high-tech spy gadgets or shocking narrative turns – is instead laser-focused on Hamid’s psyche as he toes the line between revenge and justice. After all, Hamid is not a spy but a traumatised and grieving man, the leading role performed with subtlety and deep emotion by Adam Bessa, who appears in almost every scene.

– Olivia Popp

Trailer