If the best revenge is living well, it is a truism that has not yet taken root for Hamid (a riveting Adam Bessa), the dark, scarred heart of Jonathan Millet’s brooding, gripping “Ghost Trail.” Outside his soon-to-be-revealed mission, Hamid barely has a life at all, placing him firmly in the genre tradition of the taciturn, traumatized hero whose obsessive pursuit of his quarry leaves little room for anything beyond the constant, careful stoking of his rage, grief and survivor’s guilt. 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.
Even while the screen is still black as the opening credits unfurl, the narrative...
Even while the screen is still black as the opening credits unfurl, the narrative...
- 5/17/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have dominated headlines for the past several years, yet receiving relatively little coverage today is the Syrian civil war, sparked in the wake of 2011’s Arab Spring. It is yet ongoing and stands now at an uneasy stalemate. Over a decade of fighting, horrifying humanitarian and war-time crimes were committed; all the while 13 million Syrians were displaced from their homes. These refugees, lost in foreign countries offering asylum, are still looking for answers and perhaps a reckoning and retribution. Director Jonathan Millet’s debut narrative feature Ghost Trail dives deep into one survivor’s psyche and lays bare the cost of a conflict from which the world seems to have moved on.
In Strasbourg, France, mild-mannered asylum-seeker Hamid (Adam Bessa) is doing odd jobs, moving in Syrian exile circles, looking for a man who he says is his cousin lost during the war. Occasionally...
In Strasbourg, France, mild-mannered asylum-seeker Hamid (Adam Bessa) is doing odd jobs, moving in Syrian exile circles, looking for a man who he says is his cousin lost during the war. Occasionally...
- 5/15/2024
- by Ankit Jhunjhunwala
- The Film Stage
Last year the Critics’ Week section introduced us to first and second features from the likes of Vladimir Perišić, Iris Kaltenbäck, Amanda Nell Eu, Amjad Al Rasheed and Marie Amachoukeli. In 2024, Ava Cahen’s team viewed 1050 feature films have loaded up the competition (and Special Screenings section) with eleven features. France is unsurprisingly the dominant representation country with five selections and three co-productions. Opening with Jonathan Millet‘s Les Fantômes (aka Ghost Trail) which was coined as a Cairo Conspiracy meets the surveillance world of The Lives Of Others this stars Adam Bessa, Tawfeek Barhom, Julia Franz Richter, Hala Rajab and unfolds in modern-day Strasbourg.…...
- 4/15/2024
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
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