Interview by Benjamin Poole
Writer/director Jonathan Millet makes his non-fiction feature debut with political thriller Ghost Trail. The film stars Adam Bessa as Hamid, part of a secret group pursuing the Syrian regime's fugitive leaders. His mission takes him to France, on the trail of his former torturer whom he must confront.
We spoke with Millet about his film, which opens in UK/ROI cinemas on September 19th. Check out the interview below and read our review here.
Would you like to introduce the film to our readers, and explain what drew you to this story?
Ghost Trail is a manhunt film inspired by true events. It follows a secret Syrian network hunting down war criminals in Europe. One of them believes he's found his torturer, but he hesitates because he's never seen his face.
What drew me first was how contemporary the story is. The real events happened in 2019 and touch on so many pressing issues: the Middle East, today's wars, international justice, the rise of the far right in Europe, exile… What drives me to make a film is always the desire to tell the reality, the chance to capture the world we live in now, but from a perspective different from the media's.
It also connects to my own journey. I spent a year living in Syria and have worked extensively in documentary on exile, displacement, and the lives of war refugees.
Finally, when I first heard the testimonies of those who lived through this story, I immediately felt their cinematic power. This is a manhunt, yes, but a sensory one. The protagonist has never seen his target's face - he hopes to recognize him by smell, by voice. The moment I heard that, I knew it had to become a film, and I began thinking about the best cinematic tools to make the audience feel that experience.
Your previous features include non-fiction studies of life in the Amazon (La disparition) and scientists at the Antarctic Plateau (Tell Me About the Stars), both features which, like Ghost Trail, essay solitude. In what ways did your background in documentary filmmaking shape the way you approached Ghost Trail's narrative?
Solitude and distance from the world are recurring themes for me. I've made several documentaries around them - one about one of the most isolated Antarctic bases, another in the Amazon following the very last speaker of a language, and now I'm working on a project set in the high plateaus of the Pamir in Tajikistan.
For Ghost Trail, the character's solitude naturally pushed me toward the language of the spy film. No one is more alone than a spy—unable to confide in anyone, unable to share true emotions.
Documentary has definitely influenced how I make films. It teaches you to stay open, to avoid locking things down too early, to embrace questions rather than answers. That's one of the guiding lines of Ghost Trail: I'm more interested in the character's doubts than his certainties.
I also bring with me years of research—hundreds of interviews and testimonies, countless scouting trips—the love of accuracy, and the conviction that point of view is everything: through whose eyes do we tell the story?
That's why I wanted authenticity to shine through the film. Several supporting roles are played by non-professional actors, people simply playing who they are in real life. We shot in real places: a Syrian refugee camp, the actual newsroom of Le Monde, with a real journalist.
Just because it's fiction doesn't mean I need to add artificial drama. The true story is strong enough. Fiction simply gives me different tools to tell it.
I also feel we watch documentaries and fiction in very different ways. Documentaries come with a pact of reality. Viewers are touched by authenticity, they feel empathy and compassion, but they remain a step back, in their seats. With fiction, it's about identification. The goal is for the viewer to forget they're watching a film and instead live the character's emotions, doubts, and choices as if they were their own. That's exactly what I wanted with Ghost Trail: for the audience to experience, moment by moment, everything the character is going through.
What responsibilities do you feel that you have when portraying real -world atrocities and the experience of survivors? Is there a danger that when transposing real world evils to narrative cinema it risks rendering them as entertainment?
The responsibility is huge, especially since I didn't live through this story myself and I'm not Syrian. That meant I had to be extremely thorough—working for years, learning every detail of the events, having Syrians involved throughout the process to ensure constant feedback (in the script, in the editing room).
I don't fear that adaptation to fiction reduces the story to entertainment. What I fear is not telling theses stories. If we don't adapt these stories, they risk being forgotten. This particular story - of Syrians taking justice into their own hands - is powerful, tells us something about the world we live in, and deserves to be shared. Using the language of the thriller allows us to reach a wider audience without betraying the depth of the story.
Adam Bessa's Hamid is on screen throughout the film in an immersive psychological study of grief and fury. At least that's how I read his character, but the presentation contains multitudes. Bessa's performance is multi-faceted and the portrayal so polysemic that I could imagine seeing something new and different in subsequent viewings. How do you perceive Hamid, and what sort of questions does he encourage the audience to consider? Could you talk about your collaboration with Adam Bessa in shaping Hamid's character?
Thank you. Hamid carries the story, and yes, he's many-sided.
From the outset, I wanted to move away from the usual stereotypes of Middle Eastern characters we often see in American or European cinema. I drew inspiration from Syrian friends to create a man of letters, deeply rooted in the poetic history of the Middle East, married, fulfilled, with no desire to leave for Europe. Then I threw him into immense inner turmoil—he's experienced the worst, and now he constantly questions himself: good versus evil, his own clarity, his ability to make the right choice. The film is about his inner storm. And what weighs on him is enormous: his decision—whether he's truly found his torturer or not—has both intimate and historical consequences.
With Adam, our work focused almost entirely on the body—on the intensity he radiates. Before Hamid even speaks, I wanted the audience to believe in him instantly. In his posture, his shoulders, his gaze—you should be able to think "I believe this man has been to prison. I believe he lost his wife and daughter. I believe all that he's endured." I wanted him to be legible without words, for us to read his past and his inner turmoil in his body. To fear for him, and at times to fear him—his own body might betray him.
We worked for weeks on his gaze, his gestures, his walk—as if we were making a silent film, where everything you need to know about him, everything that matters, is expressed without dialogue.
If you could programme Ghost Trail with another two films to juxtapose its themes and ideas, what would they be and why?
I'd pair it with The Conversation (Coppola, 1974), a remarkable film about solitude and inner doubt. And with Incendies (Villeneuve, 2010), a masterpiece that turns contemporary history into a Greek tragedy (not the funniest screening of all times, I know).