Ghost Hunting

The figures are quite clear: since 1967, some 750,000 Palestinians have endured a stay in one of Israel’s prisons or interrogation centers—places you really don’t want to go, as filmmaker Raed Andoni makes abundantly clear in his hybrid documentary Ghost Hunting.

For the film, he cast men who, like himself, have served time in the infamous Moscobiya Prison in West Jerusalem. He then gets them to reconstruct a whole complex from memory, down to the smallest details; it serves as a backdrop for bringing suppressed experiences to the surface.

Grueling, humiliating interrogations and desperate days in chokingly small cells are reenacted by people who actually experienced them. While one man allows himself to get carried away in the role of ruthless interrogator, another is devastated by the exact reconstruction of a prison cell. Can this really be called a reconstruction, or has the torture of the past started all over again? The distinction between reality and dramatization becomes less and less clear.