Victims become hunters in new film about torture in Syrian prisons

Now, he is chasing one of his tormentors, and tension builds. But the film begins with the context, opening with a hauntingly dark sequence capturing the anxious voices of men cramped together in unbearable positions. Like Hamid, they will soon be left for dead in the desert, their reward for surviving torture.

The film refrains from explicit depictions of the brutality, relying instead on powerful audio testimonies that Hamid listens to as he pursues Harfaz (played by Tawfeek Barhom) and others like him who now live freely in Europe.

Pursuing the perpetrator

Hamid has no image of Harfaz. What he remembers instead is his voice and smell, details that. In another context, these details might evoke intimacy, but here they exist within the chilling dynamic of a torturer abusing his prisoner's body.

The film gradually unfolds its narrative through a carefully constructed progression. It begins with Hamid introducing himself as 'Amir' to a group of Syrian refugees at a camp in the French city of Strasbourg. He claims to be searching for his cousin, Sami Hanna, one of the aliases Harfaz uses to conceal his real identity.

One of his victims recalls how Harfaz was always careful to conceal his face from his victims, and that he convinced himself he was just doing his job. He would cover detainees' heads with black bags, once telling a prisoner that his only concern was completing his "experiments in chemistry". 

The Sednaya atrocities included the use of acid and gas, with chilling echoes of Nazi-era horrors. These, too, were perpetrated by people who had little thought that their crimes would one day be exposed. 

Surveillance and secrecy

As the ghost hunters pursue him, he is unaware that it is his voice and scent that could lead to him being unmasked. Yet throughout Hamid's investigation, it becomes clear that the regime's intelligence network stretches to refugee camps abroad. 

This pervasive surveillance creates a climate of fear and a reluctance of survivors to speak out, wary of strangers and repercussions. This complicates Hamid's search. An exception is Yara (played by Hala Rajab) who, despite not believing Hamid's story, helps him uncover his first lead. 

Members of the secret cell converse online using encrypted words, but amidst the surveillance and paranoia, cell members decide to become ghosts themselves. Like the man they are hunting, they keep their physical identities hidden, leaving behind only their voices as traces of their existence.

Nina is a young German who volunteers to help the hunters. As the film unfolds, we discover that she has her own personal vendetta against the regime. Overall, however, Les Fantômes keeps a deliberate distance from politics, instead taking a deeply humanistic perspective. It centres on the victim's experience. 

Exploring perspectives

Having shed his former identity, Harfaz adopts the guise of an ordinary refugee, sitting among others and asking for food, and in a pivotal conversation, the film reveals his perspective—an ambitious chemist who was promised numerous opportunities that never arose. 

He does not confess to his past actions when speaking to Hamid, who also conceals his own identity as a torture victim. Instead, he insists on speaking French, a language that becomes his refuge and a means of distancing himself from his old self and his crimes.

Yet, beneath Harfaz's composed exterior, a certain fragility emerges. His trembling hand (owing to a nervous system condition) becomes the haunting detail that Hamid links to survivors' testimonies. It ultimately serves as the final confirmation of the perpetrator's identity. 

It is unclear whether the condition itself was caused by his crimes, or a motive behind Harfaz's decision to flee, but the film does not concern itself with sympathising with the torturer. Instead, it seeks to understand perspectives.

Questions of justice

Eventually, Hamid gets the opportunity to exact revenge, should he choose to do so. This goes to one of the film's central themes: justice. Cell members ask if they can still trust that justice will be done.

As the film covers the sensory torture that victims endured, smell and hearing play a central role. They marked the beginning of the torment, were used to measure its duration, and finally, were important in understanding that it had ended. 

Throughout his journey, Hamid constantly teeters on the edge of collapse, haunted by trauma that threatens to overwhelm him. This struggle applies equally to Nina. Due to the delicate and isolating nature of his role within the cell, Hamid cannot lead a normal life and cannot form genuine attachments to people. He is not just another refugee. His past is etched indelibly into the scars on his back.

We find out bits about Hamid's past: a former professor of Arabic literature, the devastating loss of his wife and daughter in a shocking incident denied him even the solace of holding a funeral. His mother (played by Shafiqa Atal) now lives in deplorable conditions in the Bekaa refugee camp in Beirut.

A chance for revenge

What little we do know about Hamid aligns with his ultimate choice. He did not embark on this journey for revenge, but for justice—and the difference between the two is profound. 

For the sake of that distinction, he listens to Harfaz. Under the alias Hassan al-Rammah, the torturer expresses disappointment and betrayal, having once believed in an image of the regime, only to see it in its flawed reality.

By the end, Hamid must choose whether he continues living as a ghost, or returns to being a real person. Even this final choice demands sacrifice—abandoning the relationships he has formed, opening up to others about his true past, and looking toward the future, as his mother had wished for him. 

The French film website AlloCiné described Les Fantômes as one of the best thrillers of the year. For Syrians, it could well be one of the most relevant.