Ghost Tropic (2019)

Directed by: Bas Devos | 85 minutes | drama | Actors: Saadia Bentaïeb, Laurent Kumba, Jovial Mbenga, Sara Sampelayo, Mieke De Groote, Anemone Valcke, Stefan Gota, Cédric Luvuezo, Ghasem Mousavi, Maaike Neuville

Sleeping people. Those who often travel by public transport will see them regularly. Or not, of course, if you don’t manage to stay awake because of the steady shaking of the tram, train, bus or metro. After a long shift, main character of ‘Ghost Tropic’ Khadija is exhausted and accidentally falls asleep on the subway. No one to wake her up, so at the end she finds out that there are no more subways. It’s night. Brussels sleeps. How does she get home?

She has little choice but to make her journey from one side of the city to the other on foot. At an already closed shopping center she gets the security guard to go inside with her to get money from the machine. “C’est marche?” he asks her. Yes, it worked, she says. She is too embarrassed to say that her balance was insufficient and she now has no money for a taxi.

Khadija is a middle-aged woman. She walks through the city with an open mind and without a sense of danger. She is unobtrusive, but with her deep-rooted kindness she touches the people she meets. Most at least, a single bureaucrat holds that sign up front. Director Bas Devos (‘Violet’, 2014; ‘Hellhole’, 2019) takes ample time to portray Khadij’s retreat. You could call the film slow and while that is undeniable, ‘Ghost Tropic’ is never boring. The camera work is beautiful and inventive and the slow tempo creates a poetic, sometimes almost surrealistic atmosphere.

Because the visual language is so strong, you do not notice that there is not much spoken in this loving drama. Now and then Khadija has conversations with the people she meets, so you get to know her a little better. Also beautiful are the scenes with the seventeen-year-old girl who wanders the street with friends, watched by Khadija for a reason that we will not reveal here. Her hopeful final scene can be explained in many ways. ‘Ghost Tropic’ is a film that will boost your faith in humanity (minus the bureaucracy).