GHOST SONG-Turkish German Fatih Akin competes for the first time in San Sebastián and opens the festival’s 74th Official Competition.

Shot in a lively black-and-white, like old comics, the film opens in the cemetery, where the female protagonist, Farasha (Mariam Dawoud), visits her father’s grave with her mother and four sisters. 

Seen leaving the cemetery, Farasha is next seen joyfully moving to the rhythm of a pop song at the end-of-school party - such an unexpected yet smooth transition sets the mix of tones the film breathes in - suspended between life and death, movement and stillness, happiness and mourning.

The iconic Heinrich-Hertz TV tower in Hamburg is the centre around which Farasha and Faris’ (Eren M. Güvercin) love at first sight begins and ends… but does it ever end? 

Fresh from their final school exam, the two fall for each other while sipping water and talking about their future university studies; their chemistry isolates them from the loud music and the craze on the dance floor; their love palpably flourishes as they gaze into each other’s eyes. Farasha’s imminent death sets off a challenging journey for Faris, the beloved one left behind, grieving. From this moment on, the film becomes a meditation on where the physical and the metaphysical begin, end, and blend; interlaced with this, as the film ghostly evokes other films, one may see an implied meditation on cinema itself, whose very essence lies in making the absent present, real. Faris’ awakened status evolves to be the nightmare of the consciousness of loss; his unconscious, dormant status turns into the dreamed Eden where Farasha visits him, and they can let their love live, yet at the cost of his life - in the first oneiric scene, Farasha’s father tells her that after 40 days, the soul has to let go of the dimension of the living, for the best. The film exposes the burden of loss not just for those who stay, but, poignantly, for those who go. 

The repeated interchange of extreme high-angle, low-angle, and wide-lens shots speaks to heightened emotions and shifting perspectives as the events unfold. Close-ups of the young protagonists emphasise their sorrow and anguish in their physical separation, as well as the utter joy in their spiritual connection. 

In Ghost Song, Akin engages with a ‘tale’ of enduring youthful love, which becomes the basis for interrogating humanity’s essential questions. 

While didactic elements in the storytelling detract from immersion in the narrative, the young actors are very persuasive in their tender portrayal of first love, a love that, whether romantic or of any other type, reminds us, movingly, that the dead don’t die.