Athens, with its living scars and timeless monuments, takes center stage in Charlie Kaufman’s new short film How to Shoot a Ghost, which premieres today at the 82nd Biennale di Venezia. The Oscar-winning screenwriter, director, and novelist — celebrated for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — turns the Greek capital into both stage and character in this 27-minute meditation on mortality, memory, and belonging.
The film follows two newly dead young people — a translator and a photographer — who meet in the streets of Athens. Outsiders in life, they wander together in death, confronting the remnants of their desires and mistakes. Their story unfolds against the city’s layered backdrop, where ancient ruins, modern scars, and everyday life co-exist.
Kaufman has described Athens as the perfect canvas for this exploration of time and loss: “Athens, a city in which the bones of history are always on display — whether it’s living scars from the dictatorship of the 1970s, or the presence of monuments that stood at the time of the plague of two thousand years ago — is the perfect place to explore the tangle of past and present, how the policies and longings of the dead go on living within us.”
Produced between Greece and the U.S., How to Shoot a Ghost blends street photography, archival footage, and home videos to underscore the fragile passage of time — how the “now” inevitably becomes the “then,” and how today’s living become tomorrow’s ghosts.
The film stars Lebanese actor Josef Akiki and Academy Award–nominated Irish actress and singer Jessie Buckley, from a script by Eva H.D.
A decade after Anomalisa (2015), which won the Grand Jury Prize, Kaufman returns to the Lido with a work that ties his signature existential themes to the living fabric of Athens. Speaking to Variety, he shared: “I’m so pleased to be going to Venice with How to Shoot a Ghost. It’s a lovely festival that holds a very special place in my heart.”
