Director Jonathan Millet had been immersed in the world of documentaries for years. He had performed one about detention centers in Ceuta and has always been interested in the political situation in Syria, but did not find the story he wanted to tell. He spoke with many exiles, told him his stories, and knew he wanted to do something with them, but he didn’t know how. I doubted whether the documentary was the right way to do it or if it would be fiction that would move all that better.
What was clear is that it could not be a succession of testimonies, words, describing the suffering and violence suffered by many of them. As they were talking to them, I listened more times to talk about the clandestine networks of Syrian exiles who followed the track of war criminals, of those who had tortured them and now hid in Europe in the face of the impunity of the justice of the continent. An issue that also reached notoriety thanks to two articles published in April 2019 in Libération on the hunt for one of those torturers nicknamed as ‘The Chemist’.
Millet saw there the story I wanted to tell through which to radiograph the European geopolitics. He does it in The ghost network, A thriller who has been one of the revelations of French cinema last year and has managed to be nominated for César for the best prima opera and the best revelation actor for its protagonist Adam Besta. A success that has a lot to do with its sober, almost austere style, moving away from easy turns, which makes it a rare Avis in algorithms times.
The filmmaker has visited Spain to promote the film, and it does just the day he has just known his two candidates for the French cinema awards. He is happy. When asked if The ghost networkwith its rhythms and its forms it is, in some way, an anti netflix movie, the filmmaker laughs and nods. Then he adds that he makes the movies he would like to see as a spectator, and those are those in which “every detail of the image is important and that you cannot get up to go looking for a beer during the movie.”
“To build a work that requires the viewer’s attention I do not need to create spectacular images every ten minutes. I believe in the spectator’s intelligence. In its ability to understand why certain decisions are made. In this movie every scene charges the next scene and that makes us too, as spectators, let’s live very tense moments. The tension is built in the head, there is no need for explosions or sword struggles. We have given enough elements to the viewer to understand that these are also issues of life or death, ”he adds.
For him “the thriller is the form”, but the important thing is what is inside, and here beats a story that is again currently after the fall of Al Asad last December. Millet emphasizes that until then “there was a long time that there was no talk of Syria, as if the problem had disappeared or no longer care, although the civil war continued and followed the bombings.” He Timing He has made his film look almost a prequel of the current moment. He sees it as “a dialogue with the present.”
“It is as if the film was filled with reality, as if reality supported the film. The future is very difficult to predict, but what is clear is that the fall of Al Asad is very important for the Syrian people. For 13 years he bombarded his people and nobody did anything. Symbolically, that it has fallen is something huge. Then the fact that prisons are opened is very important, because there are people who have been in the subsoils for years without seeing the light. The Syrian community has lived in a constant threat and cannot speak badly of the regime because the next day its close relatives will be detained. The exiles could not tell that they were leaving. It is a country that should be rebuilt, ”he adds although he refuses to predict the future.
Although the film focuses on a character that seeks its torturer, Millet says that he built it through the “testimony of numerous war refugees and members who had been in those secret cells.” People who see revenge as the only way to counteract the impunity of Al Asad.
“The problem of international justice is that there are always commitments. At the time there are several countries, economic issues are already involved and that is what the film tells. Everyone believes in international justice, but at the time Russia can veto something for years, it is obvious that something does not work. It can be for money, for fear of a veto, for fear of daesh … The ghost network It shows how the Syrian citizens who have lost everything, who were bombarded by a dictator. And yet they are the only ones that retain some hope and that is why they continue in search of justice, ”says the filmmaker.
The ghost network confirms the opinion of its director, who trusts in the power of cinema “to get out of the confinement forgotten issues” and remain in time in the face of the urgency of journalism. That these issues come “to a broader audience”, one more reason why he chose fiction to show “a vision of the world and a different look” in the face of a topic that is again on the political board.
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