How to sh**t a Ghost (2025)

[bunniefuu]

[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 w*r.

[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 t*rture 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

f*cking 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