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| Ghost Trail |
French director Jonathan Millet's narrative debut Ghost Trail follows Hamid (Adam Bessa), a Syrian literature professor, who was tortured by the Assad regime and forced to seek refuge in Germany. Working for a clandestine group who are hunting down members of the regime that have fled Syria, Hamid is now in France, where, against instructions from others in the group, he searches for the guard he suspects was responsible for torturing him.
Millet's previous credits include the 2013 documentary, Ceuta, Douce Prison, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Loïc Hecht, about five migrants trying to reach Europe, who have been detained in a Spanish enclave in Northern Morocco. This was preceded by his 2012 narrative short Old Love Desert, which revolves around an awkward interaction between a couple. His short to mid-length documentaries have covered a range of subjects, from grief in The Wake (La Veillée, 2013), the migrant's experience of Paris in Et Toujours Nous Marcherons (2017) to a hermit-like existence in the Amazonian jungle in La Disparition (2021).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Millet discussed cinema's ability to probe the minds of its characters, his own fascination with images, and weaving together reality and imagination. He also discussed the influence of the spy film on Ghost Trail and creating a journey for the film's audience.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Paul Risker: Your path to filmmaking has been an interesting one that should remind us of the different ways one can discover cinema and their creative voice.
Jonathan Millet: When I think back on my childhood, I did not watch a lot of movies. I had no TV, and I was far removed from any theatre. So, each time I watched something visual, whether it be a commercial, a bad TV series or any film, it was a powerful experience because the lack of pictures makes any picture stronger.
I lived for almost a year and a half on a boat in the middle of the ocean with my father. So, when I said I was disconnected from a theatre, TV or any screen, I was being honest. And I had to wait until I was 17 before I had my own TV, and I was able to go out to the theatre. But I knew I wanted to tell stories and when I had to choose what medium I'd work in, cinema was the obvious choice because it was so powerful. And I realised that a lot of filmmakers I admired at this time were following their own path.
[…] It was Werner Herzog who said, "I have to travel for three or four years, and then I will be able to make a movie." I thought, okay, I have to follow my own curiosity around the world, and then, I will be able to make movies — I will have something to say, I will have stories to tell, or I will know who I am.
At that time, I was curious and open-minded. I wanted to travel, to meet people, to listen to stories, and to study other languages. So, one day, when I was eighteen, I took that first train, and from one country to another, it took me five years to make it back home.
I was hired to take pictures for Databank. I worked for them for three years, filming fifty countries for image databases. I'd be alone with my camera in the desert of Sudan or in the jungle of Amazonia. This was my film school and afterwards, when I returned to France, I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. And that brought me first to documentary, and now fiction.
PR: A dramatisation of a real story, Ghost Trail remains connected to your documentary roots.
JM: I'm curious about reality and I came across the story when I read a short news piece. But the news piece was just three lines about something that happened to someone. The next day, I was thinking about the protagonist, and I wanted to explore what had happened. So, the spark of the idea was reality. Then it's a mix of all the information I can bring to the film. But you also have to imagine, because it's so deeply entrenched in this character's mind that it's something more blurred than profound truth.
[…] When you adapt a book, you have pages of narrative steps, but when you work on these types of stories, they are a door through which you have many different ways to tell the story. At the heart of it was trauma, bereavement, loneliness, and obsession. These were all the personal subjects I carried from one film to another that found their place here, in this story.
What I like about trauma is, at first, it's invisible. And you can use the tools of cinema to plunge deep into and access the mind of a character. This also explains why I chose cinema over another medium, because you can take this approach, and for me, that's interesting.
PR: The quietness of Hamid and the lightness of his movement brings a specific energy to the film. It also draws the audience towards him and immerses us in his search, in which details are subtly woven.
JM: I wanted that but in an ordinary setting where everyone is okay. For example, a library filled with students. I wanted the audience to feel something extraordinary through the tiniest of details in the film's settings, with the most boring or routine sets you could imagine. My goal was to make you understand that there is this big history and something huge happening, but I wanted you to feel it through these small details.
PR: The emphasis of Ghost Trail is about looking and listening and picking out these details, which you will only be able to do if you're genuinely paying attention.
JM: There are some films where you give the viewer everything, but in Ghost Trail, I'm asking the viewer to do some of the work. That's why the film opens with a minute of total darkness and only sound. It is a way to communicate this to the viewer and to ask them to think about the sounds and where we might be.
What you said about watching and listening are the main goals of spy or espionage movies, because nothing is supposed to be obvious. It is supposed to be about the tiny details. And that's why, when I heard about this story, it reminded me of the spy movie which I brought to the film because it involves the viewer. It's a means to say that whatever the characters say is not necessarily the truth. So, as a viewer, you have to think about the truth behind or beneath the words. And also, you have to watch everything because maybe the deeper truth of the character is in his gestures and not his words.
PR: How did you approach the camera as a tool to take the audience inside Hamid's mind and explore the thematic layers of the story?
JM: Well, for me, the film is set in the whirlwind of Hamid's tormented mind. The film is about doubts and the question whether he is able to find this person he's searching for or is the trauma so great that he will not be able to recognise him? So, it's not about war, it's not about trauma, it's not about the guy. Instead, it's about all the consequences and habits.
I could have focused my camera only on Hamid, but I wanted to plunge the audience inside his perception of the world, and to be afraid, not for him, but of him, because he's tormented, and he could make a big mistake.
While we are watching the film, as a viewer we ask ourselves many questions. We can like Hamid and still be afraid that he's making a huge mistake. We are not used to that because in a lot of movies the character is always right, and this is a big lie in narrative storytelling. But I wanted the viewer to, at least once in Ghost Trail, ask whether Hamid is totally out of his mind, and he's on the wrong track?
You still empathise with him, because you can understand why he's acting like that. But my goal was to connect the camera to Hamid, and it never lets us see more than he is able to see. For example, if he's far away from someone he's following, then we are. And the closer Hamid is, the closer the camera is.
PR: Ghost Trail is a timely film because it's about interrogating what we think we know or want to believe. Right now, we're living through a period of heightened misinformation and fake news.
JM: I'm more interested in doubts and questions than in the truth — whatever that truth is in the end. I wanted to work on the journey you'll have as a viewer, and I like the idea that things are more complex than what you think they are.
To talk about Middle Eastern geopolitics especially, I want to explain to viewers that everything is complex, and time is needed to be sure about who someone is and what's at stake for everyone.
So, in the editing room, it took months working on these different steps of the journey for the viewers. It was really about pulling the mind of the viewer from one place to another. Also, to let Hamid have time and space with all of his thoughts, and to give the viewer this space too.
Ghost Trail opens theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on 30 May.
