GHOST TRAIL - Mark Reviews Movies

Ghost Trail, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 29, 2025

Death is right there from the start of Ghost Trail, a haunting thriller. The story involves a man from Syria, released from a notorious government prison known for torture and mass executions, who searches for the primary torturer of that facility in Europe. Before the hunt of co-writer/director Jonathan Millet's film begins, though, we watch as Hamid (Adam Bessa) is let free in the Syrian desert in 2014, after an unknown amount of time imprisoned, and as he watches a fellow former inmate collapse to the ground. There's nothing the soldiers will do for this man, and there's nothing Hamid could do for him, either.

The plot that follows, set two years later mostly in the French city of Strasbourg, is fairly straightforward, but an air of loss and moral uncertainty lingers throughout it. Hamid has come to France, after some time in Germany, under the assumption that the man he's looking for either left Germany or never went there in the first place, since so many refugees from the Syrian civil war sought asylum in that country.

He's alone in that belief among the other members of a team of hunters, looking for anyone involved in the government of Bashar al-Assad or in the detention, torture, and killing of political prisoners. The group, made of other victims of the government, seems to be acting of its own volition and without any kind of official connection to any larger organization. They talk over the phone, always using codes and referring to each other as godparents or godchildren, or online in the chat of—ironically or appropriately, depending on how one looks it at—a war video game, where bullets are exchanged and cities are leveled from explosions.

There are several complications in Hamid's mission. He doesn't have any support from the rest of his group, who insist that he return to Germany and continue his search there with the rest of them. His refugee status in France has come into question, since he first found asylum in Germany and has no obvious rationale for remaining in this country.

The most significant obstacle, however, is that none of the survivors of the prison has seen the man for whom Hamid and his team are hunting. Whenever he would come into a room, either his or his victim's face would be covered. The only lead Hamid has to go on is a photograph of a man some believe to be the fugitive, and after claiming that the photo is of his cousin, Hamid eventually gets some help from another Syrian woman named Yara (Hala Rajab).

This is the setup for the plot of Millet and co-writer Florence Rochat's screenplay, which proceeds when Hamid spots a suspicious man, played by Tawfeek Barhom, at a local university. His voice sounds familiar—like the one belonging to the man who gave him the scars all over his back during his time in that prison. The group, of course, is skeptical, but Hamid is insistent that this could be their man. Nina (Julia Franz Richter), an Austrian woman who is part of the team for a reason she keeps to herself, eventually comes to Strasbourg, hoping to help Hamid confirm the man's identity or to convince her colleague to return to Germany.

Such are the basic mechanics of the plot, which unfold with some tension, as Hamid continues to follow and get closer to his suspect in order to hear him better and even catch a smell of his tormentor's distinct fragrance. He's persistent, despite the constant but, as their own investigations come up short, decreasing pushback from his comrades in Germany and the mounting realization that he may never be certain if this or any man could be properly identified as the notorious Harfaz of Sednaya Prison. There are no witnesses, after all—only voices describing what they suffered at the man's hands, filling Hamid with even more determination to find his target.

That uncertainty raises, not only the stakes of this story (never more so than during a climactic confrontation when Hamid finally gets to hear the other man's history or, perhaps, an intricately devised story), but also multiple questions about the efficacy and righteousness of Hamid's mission. How far is he willing to take this obsession, especially as we learn that it's not only based in the physical and psychological pain he endured in captivity? Is he becoming convinced that the stranger actually is Harfaz based on the evidence, or is he merely convincing himself of that as a fact, because it's what he wants more than anything else? Is the all-encompassing nature of the hunt even worthwhile, when the man's life, once filled with family and friends and a career as a literature professor at a university, has been reduced to only accomplishing this likely futile task?

There is, in other words, much more going on beneath the surface of Millet's film, which finds a notable balance between the plotting of the hunt and observing how it has overtaken Hamid's life—from his isolated existence to the way he eventually forgets about his own mother (played by Shafiqa El Till), who's currently living in Beirut and has some health issues. It may be about a chase, but this is a quiet, contemplative film that's as much about trauma, grief, the distinctions between revenge and justice, and the burden of obsession as it is about the hunt at the center of its plot. Ghost Trail is an effective thriller, to be sure, but mostly because it's one with an overwhelming sense of regret and an active conscience.

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