How to Shoot a Ghost (2025) Movie Script
[Camera clicks]
[Wind blows]
[Music]
Narrator: Before they were ghosts, they were people.
In the city.
[Music]
Narrator: They met on the day after the last day of
their lives.
Narrator: On the last night of his life, he stayed
up late translating Thucydides.
[Pen writes on paper]
Narrator: On the last night of her life,
after the fight in her father's kitchen,
she set the family record on fire.
[Music]
[Wings flutter]
Narrator: That night, he ran into fate disguised as
the dawn.
[Music]
[Birds cry]
[Footsteps of men approaching]
[Door shuts]
[Music]
[Waves crash]
Narrator: And when he walked out of the sea, he was
a ghost.
[Waves crash]
[Sirens wail]
[Music]
[Traffic noises]
Narrator: A blue door opened to a blue world.
Blue, blue.
A strap fell from the shoulder of the sky.
[Camera clicks]
[Man and woman argue distantly]
[Waves crash]
Narrator: The city spills with ghosts of those who
could not let it go.
[Soft Bouzouki music begins]
[Bouzouki music]
[Camera clicks]
[Man and woman argue distantly]
Narrator: She swallows, notes her throat's
vanishing.
Rateb: Chris?
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Wind blows]
[Camera clicks]
[Camera clicks]
Narrator: In the city,the color of the truth
changes like the color of a ghost in the
light.
[camera clicks]
[Faintly] Anthi: I don't want to see you everywhere.
[Distant arguing]
[Camera clicks]
[Music]
Anthi: I just want to remember.
[Music]
[Traffic sounds]
[Wind blows]
Rateb: I arrived before the war.
[indistinct chatter] Rateb: I never liked the city I left behind.
They told me where to find love.
Rateb: I looked elsewhere.
[Indistinct chatter]
[Footsteps of men approaching]
Anthi: Did you think it would be like home?
Rateb : Home is an idea I never had.
Rateb: The history of the plague of Athens is not
a medical account,
but a moral story posing as a medical
account.
Anthi: I moved here for my father. But hes a
fake. Nothing here is real.
Even the marble is repainted.
The marble is fake, its from the 60s.
It's made of plastic.
Anthi: The marble was eaten by pollution because
nobody cared.
Rateb: The marble is the most beautiful thing
I've ever seen.
[Camera clicks]
Anthi: Also that.
[Indistinct arguing]
[Slap]
[Glass shatters]
[Music]
Narrator: She went to the wrong party. She fled her
own reflection.
She ran into the deep, bright city night.
Here, even darkness is a kind of light.
[Writing on paper]
Anthi: What do you want to remember?
Rateb: The chocolate hazelnut paste of his eyes.
[Music]
[Fruits fall to ground]
Rateb: The stain of honey on cardboard.
Rateb: What do you want?
[Indistinct chatter]
Anthi You can die of wanting, and go on
doing it.
[Woman begins singing in Greek]
[Woman sings in Greek]
[Indistinct chatter]
[Woman sings in Greek]
Anthi: I spent my life being ignored by
everything I want.
[Woman sings in Greek]
Anthi: I can't spend my death that way.
[Music]
[Thrumming club sounds]
[Tap turns on]
[Club music intensifies]
[Wind blowing]
[Music]
Narrator: In the city, thirst is not quenched,
it is erased.
Anthi: Being here was supposed to make me someone
else.
Rateb: There is still time.
[Birds cry]
[Power washer turns on]
[Music]
Rateb: When the plague hit the city, many died.
Not Thucydides.
I always think... I can't help it, I think
he must have done something unspeakable.
Rateb I mean, how else does one survive?
Anthi: I didn't. Did I?
[Camera clicks]
[Pigeon coos]
[Music]
Narrator: Outside the old police station on
Bouboulina Street,
a girl waits forty years for her lover
who's never emerged.
Narrator: In the city, even cheap romances carry
scars from the junta.
[Music]
Narrator: Fragrant rosacea of the summer trees
where the jackboots of the riot cops echo.
Narrator: The air is lilac and diesel.
Anthi: The past is thick enough to choke on.
Narrator: The juntas ghosts linger. There is no
package tour through the torture rooms of
the CIA.
Rateb: An aggravation of the existing calamity
was
the influx from the country into the city,
and this
[writing on paper] was especially felt by
the new arrivals.
Rateb: What's the difference between a refugee
and a tourist?
Rateb: The tourists are everywhere.
They are hungry. They are lost.
Anthi: Hmm. What's the punchline?
[Camera clicks]
[Music]
Narrator: The whole street is a gift.
[Pigeon wings flap] A pigeon in a state of
rampant death on the road,
wings outstretched. How does the heart fly
so far from the body?
Up, up, up, past the awning.
Narrator: They turn a corner
Anthi: and suddenly the police are beating this
guy in the middle of the street.
Anthi: He's lost a flip-flop.
Rateb: The bystanders are just... standing by.
- Anthi: Shaking their heads.
- This doesn't happen in
Greece, they say.
The guy's face is just blood and noise.
And then he's gone.
Anthi: The cops are gone.
The empty plastic flip-flop lies there in
the road.
[Music]
Anthi: I found a body in a taxi and it was me.
The body was made of marble. The taxi was
made of smoke.
Anthi: The millennia got lost down an alley and
returned, out of order.
Rateb: At work, we used to think language was
carved in stone,
but it's more like water.
Rateb: I drank so much salt water and it did not.
Erase. My thirst.
Rateb: History is written by the victor. It
elbows its way into the present,
where you can die of it.
[Music]
Anthi: Find me the victor.
[Music]
[Music]
Narrator: At caf tables in every square, they splay
the yellowed paper of their hands.
They say, in a country like Greece, every
fucking stone has underneath it blood.
Anthi: I dreamed the skin of this city fell off
and there were no bones underneath.
No. Nothing but the space between where
the bones had been.
Anthi:: I lifted a stone and found
nothing.
Like one day, youll lift the stone of my
life. Or not.
Anthi:: What are you thinking?
Rateb: I think of my mother always preparing
dinner for the daughter-in law-who never
arrive.
Rateb: There are words you cannot carry. Words
rush in with their history,
make shrapnel of themselves.
Anthi: Could we visit?
[distant sirens]
Rateb: She so adored the son I could have been,
had I been anyone else.
[Music]
Anthi It is enough.
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
Narrator: They came to a place known, as if for the
first time.
[Music]
[sirens]
Narrator: Where the fabric of existence was ripped,
possibility flooded in.
[a projector whirs]
[Music]
[train passing]
[birds cry]
[Music]
[Music]
Narrator: The moon white as bitten skin. She says,
Anthi: I can taste the fruit stains on your
hands.
Narrator: He says,
Rateb: People are nothing but lines on paper,
and we've been written in water.
Narrator: The night a broken tiara, the nights
eyeliner running.
Narrator: The city is a girl getting ready for the
wrong party.
Anthi: His lungs fill with liquid.
Rateb: She starts to shake and shake and shake.
Narrator: Unbelonging is a homeland.
Anthi: Unbelonging is a homeland.
Rateb: Unbelonging is a homeland.
Narrator: This is not their place to haunt. It was
never theirs.
[Bird cries] Narrator: Waves of gray sky congregate over the
city, softly in the wake of their regrets.
She went to the wrong party. He had always
been the wrong person.
Narrator: Into her ear he whispers, but the waves
are so loud.
A country without history, a family
without a past.
Narrator: This isn't suffering.
[Music]
Narrator: It is enough.
[Waves crash]
[Wind blows softly]
[Wind blows]
Narrator: Believe it or not, all of this is true.
[Waves crash]
[Wind blows]
[Wind blows] [Waves lap]
["Perfect Day" performed by Martha and
Rufus Wainwright plays]
Martha: Just a perfect day drink sangria in a park
Martha: and then later when it gets dark we go
home
Rufus: Just a perfect day feed animals in the zoo
Rufus: and then later a movie, too and then home
Rufus & Martha: Oh it's such a perfect day I'm glad I
spend it with you
Rufus & Martha: Oh, such a perfect day You just keep me
hanging on You just keep me hanging on
Martha: Just a perfect day, problems all left
alone
Martha: Weekenders on our own, it's such fun
Rufus: Just a perfect day, you made me forget
myself I thought I was someone else,
someone good
Rufus & Martha: Oh, it's such a perfect day I'm glad I
spent it with you
Rufus & Martha: Oh, such a perfect day You just keep me
hanging on You just keep me hanging on
Rufus: You're going to reap just what you sow
Martha: You're going to reap just what you sow
Rufus: You're going to reap just what you sow
Martha: You're going to reap just what you sow
[Wind blows]
[Music]
Narrator: Before they were ghosts, they were people.
In the city.
[Music]
Narrator: They met on the day after the last day of
their lives.
Narrator: On the last night of his life, he stayed
up late translating Thucydides.
[Pen writes on paper]
Narrator: On the last night of her life,
after the fight in her father's kitchen,
she set the family record on fire.
[Music]
[Wings flutter]
Narrator: That night, he ran into fate disguised as
the dawn.
[Music]
[Birds cry]
[Footsteps of men approaching]
[Door shuts]
[Music]
[Waves crash]
Narrator: And when he walked out of the sea, he was
a ghost.
[Waves crash]
[Sirens wail]
[Music]
[Traffic noises]
Narrator: A blue door opened to a blue world.
Blue, blue.
A strap fell from the shoulder of the sky.
[Camera clicks]
[Man and woman argue distantly]
[Waves crash]
Narrator: The city spills with ghosts of those who
could not let it go.
[Soft Bouzouki music begins]
[Bouzouki music]
[Camera clicks]
[Man and woman argue distantly]
Narrator: She swallows, notes her throat's
vanishing.
Rateb: Chris?
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Wind blows]
[Camera clicks]
[Camera clicks]
Narrator: In the city,the color of the truth
changes like the color of a ghost in the
light.
[camera clicks]
[Faintly] Anthi: I don't want to see you everywhere.
[Distant arguing]
[Camera clicks]
[Music]
Anthi: I just want to remember.
[Music]
[Traffic sounds]
[Wind blows]
Rateb: I arrived before the war.
[indistinct chatter] Rateb: I never liked the city I left behind.
They told me where to find love.
Rateb: I looked elsewhere.
[Indistinct chatter]
[Footsteps of men approaching]
Anthi: Did you think it would be like home?
Rateb : Home is an idea I never had.
Rateb: The history of the plague of Athens is not
a medical account,
but a moral story posing as a medical
account.
Anthi: I moved here for my father. But hes a
fake. Nothing here is real.
Even the marble is repainted.
The marble is fake, its from the 60s.
It's made of plastic.
Anthi: The marble was eaten by pollution because
nobody cared.
Rateb: The marble is the most beautiful thing
I've ever seen.
[Camera clicks]
Anthi: Also that.
[Indistinct arguing]
[Slap]
[Glass shatters]
[Music]
Narrator: She went to the wrong party. She fled her
own reflection.
She ran into the deep, bright city night.
Here, even darkness is a kind of light.
[Writing on paper]
Anthi: What do you want to remember?
Rateb: The chocolate hazelnut paste of his eyes.
[Music]
[Fruits fall to ground]
Rateb: The stain of honey on cardboard.
Rateb: What do you want?
[Indistinct chatter]
Anthi You can die of wanting, and go on
doing it.
[Woman begins singing in Greek]
[Woman sings in Greek]
[Indistinct chatter]
[Woman sings in Greek]
Anthi: I spent my life being ignored by
everything I want.
[Woman sings in Greek]
Anthi: I can't spend my death that way.
[Music]
[Thrumming club sounds]
[Tap turns on]
[Club music intensifies]
[Wind blowing]
[Music]
Narrator: In the city, thirst is not quenched,
it is erased.
Anthi: Being here was supposed to make me someone
else.
Rateb: There is still time.
[Birds cry]
[Power washer turns on]
[Music]
Rateb: When the plague hit the city, many died.
Not Thucydides.
I always think... I can't help it, I think
he must have done something unspeakable.
Rateb I mean, how else does one survive?
Anthi: I didn't. Did I?
[Camera clicks]
[Pigeon coos]
[Music]
Narrator: Outside the old police station on
Bouboulina Street,
a girl waits forty years for her lover
who's never emerged.
Narrator: In the city, even cheap romances carry
scars from the junta.
[Music]
Narrator: Fragrant rosacea of the summer trees
where the jackboots of the riot cops echo.
Narrator: The air is lilac and diesel.
Anthi: The past is thick enough to choke on.
Narrator: The juntas ghosts linger. There is no
package tour through the torture rooms of
the CIA.
Rateb: An aggravation of the existing calamity
was
the influx from the country into the city,
and this
[writing on paper] was especially felt by
the new arrivals.
Rateb: What's the difference between a refugee
and a tourist?
Rateb: The tourists are everywhere.
They are hungry. They are lost.
Anthi: Hmm. What's the punchline?
[Camera clicks]
[Music]
Narrator: The whole street is a gift.
[Pigeon wings flap] A pigeon in a state of
rampant death on the road,
wings outstretched. How does the heart fly
so far from the body?
Up, up, up, past the awning.
Narrator: They turn a corner
Anthi: and suddenly the police are beating this
guy in the middle of the street.
Anthi: He's lost a flip-flop.
Rateb: The bystanders are just... standing by.
- Anthi: Shaking their heads.
- This doesn't happen in
Greece, they say.
The guy's face is just blood and noise.
And then he's gone.
Anthi: The cops are gone.
The empty plastic flip-flop lies there in
the road.
[Music]
Anthi: I found a body in a taxi and it was me.
The body was made of marble. The taxi was
made of smoke.
Anthi: The millennia got lost down an alley and
returned, out of order.
Rateb: At work, we used to think language was
carved in stone,
but it's more like water.
Rateb: I drank so much salt water and it did not.
Erase. My thirst.
Rateb: History is written by the victor. It
elbows its way into the present,
where you can die of it.
[Music]
Anthi: Find me the victor.
[Music]
[Music]
Narrator: At caf tables in every square, they splay
the yellowed paper of their hands.
They say, in a country like Greece, every
fucking stone has underneath it blood.
Anthi: I dreamed the skin of this city fell off
and there were no bones underneath.
No. Nothing but the space between where
the bones had been.
Anthi:: I lifted a stone and found
nothing.
Like one day, youll lift the stone of my
life. Or not.
Anthi:: What are you thinking?
Rateb: I think of my mother always preparing
dinner for the daughter-in law-who never
arrive.
Rateb: There are words you cannot carry. Words
rush in with their history,
make shrapnel of themselves.
Anthi: Could we visit?
[distant sirens]
Rateb: She so adored the son I could have been,
had I been anyone else.
[Music]
Anthi It is enough.
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
Narrator: They came to a place known, as if for the
first time.
[Music]
[sirens]
Narrator: Where the fabric of existence was ripped,
possibility flooded in.
[a projector whirs]
[Music]
[train passing]
[birds cry]
[Music]
[Music]
Narrator: The moon white as bitten skin. She says,
Anthi: I can taste the fruit stains on your
hands.
Narrator: He says,
Rateb: People are nothing but lines on paper,
and we've been written in water.
Narrator: The night a broken tiara, the nights
eyeliner running.
Narrator: The city is a girl getting ready for the
wrong party.
Anthi: His lungs fill with liquid.
Rateb: She starts to shake and shake and shake.
Narrator: Unbelonging is a homeland.
Anthi: Unbelonging is a homeland.
Rateb: Unbelonging is a homeland.
Narrator: This is not their place to haunt. It was
never theirs.
[Bird cries] Narrator: Waves of gray sky congregate over the
city, softly in the wake of their regrets.
She went to the wrong party. He had always
been the wrong person.
Narrator: Into her ear he whispers, but the waves
are so loud.
A country without history, a family
without a past.
Narrator: This isn't suffering.
[Music]
Narrator: It is enough.
[Waves crash]
[Wind blows softly]
[Wind blows]
Narrator: Believe it or not, all of this is true.
[Waves crash]
[Wind blows]
[Wind blows] [Waves lap]
["Perfect Day" performed by Martha and
Rufus Wainwright plays]
Martha: Just a perfect day drink sangria in a park
Martha: and then later when it gets dark we go
home
Rufus: Just a perfect day feed animals in the zoo
Rufus: and then later a movie, too and then home
Rufus & Martha: Oh it's such a perfect day I'm glad I
spend it with you
Rufus & Martha: Oh, such a perfect day You just keep me
hanging on You just keep me hanging on
Martha: Just a perfect day, problems all left
alone
Martha: Weekenders on our own, it's such fun
Rufus: Just a perfect day, you made me forget
myself I thought I was someone else,
someone good
Rufus & Martha: Oh, it's such a perfect day I'm glad I
spent it with you
Rufus & Martha: Oh, such a perfect day You just keep me
hanging on You just keep me hanging on
Rufus: You're going to reap just what you sow
Martha: You're going to reap just what you sow
Rufus: You're going to reap just what you sow
Martha: You're going to reap just what you sow