½

France | Belgium | Germany 2024
Opening March 13, 2025

Directed by: Jonathan Millet
Writing credits: Jonathan Millet, Florence Rochat
Principal actors: Adam Bessa, Tawfeek Barhom, Julia Franz Richter, Hala Rajab

French writer-director Jonathan Millet’s debut cloak-and-dagger film’s opening scene, set in March 2014, establishes its ambience, grittiness, and lack of benevolence as a truckload of bewildered men are unceremoniously dumped helplessly into the vastness of Murron, Syria’s nothingness. It broodingly swirls around Hamid’s (Adam Bessa) departure from Syria, subsequent clandestine activities, and the multitude of reasons luring him into vengeance. Telecommuting regularly with his mother (Safiqa El Till) is the anchor holding his life together. Otherwise, living in France and hunting furtive Syrian war criminals, Nina (Julia Franz Richter) handles Hamid’s overt assignments. Currently, the group is after the fugitive leader that tortured, among many, Hamid in Syra’s notorious Sednaya Prison. While in pursuit of the mark, Harfaz (Tawfeek Barhom), Hamid meets Yara (Hala Rajab) who provides an invaluable friendship with her wary, wily wits; concurrently, another option opens. Shadowing Harfaz images blur, absoluteness is timeworn, murky. He and Nina become transfixed whereby facts and truths are entangled, their reality confused. Although free, Hamid is haunted still by his ravaged, savage homeland thus, bent on retribution.

Inspired by true facts, Jonathan Millet with Florence Rochat’s screenplay scaled-down wordiness and steady deliberateness, together with Adam Bessa’s transfixing performance delivers a quiet yet inescapably scalding, scarring film. Bessa’s smoldering nuanced facial expressions, haunted eyes that are sometimes hooded, quick or roaming, measured speech and proximity to others are a language in themselves. The story twists under scrutiny as its protagonists falter in their surety.

Maximizing Ghost Trail’s machination and tension is its sound design (Raphael Sohier), music (Yuksek), and cinematography (Olivier Boonjing)—Laurent Sénéchal’s editing is snagged in a few places. The deeply felt psychological impact so subtly implied is enunciated clearly throughout the film. What wars steal their victims is irreplaceable, not just externally but more importantly internally in the existential essence of a person. Is Hamid’s survivorship only skin deep? 106 minutes (Marinell H,)