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As an Artist, I Think It's Enough: Charlie Kaufman Presents HOW TO SHOOT A GHOST at the 23th FICM

Screenwriter and film director Charlie Kaufman presented his short film How to Shoot a Ghost at the 23rd edition of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), where he unveiled a commemorative armchair bearing his name. Kaufman also spoke with screenwriter Eva H.D. during a discussion moderated by Fernanda Solórzano

“During the pandemic, Eva recorded one of her poems with a friend and sent it to me, so I thought it could work (...) I felt I had a huge responsibility not to mess it up,” Kaufman explained.

In How to Shoot a Ghost, two recently deceased young people (Jessie Buckley and Josef Akiki) meet on the streets of Athens, amid the vibrant urban landscape and the ghosts of history. He is a translator, she is a photographer. They were outsiders in life, and in death, they grapple with the traces of their desires and mistakes. Together they wander the city, finding solace in the complex beauty of existence and all its consequences.

Eva H.D., quoting Tim Morrison, says that poetry, an important part of the short film, is nothing but pain: “It's something we can all do to seek out this pain, which is there; Charlie does it in his films.” 

In his films, Kaufman's characters deal with loneliness, the idea of death, and heartbreak; it's a constant theme. In this short film, which he did not write, they seem to bear only a passing resemblance to the author of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, who maintains that his aim was “to know what she wanted, what her intention was.”

“[The characters] are hopeful because they are dead,” jokes Eva H.D., adding, “The characters feel free because they are not written by him.”

“Because we are aware of death, we invent hope,” Kaufman responds, and within that hope lies the idea that ghosts are sustained by the things they liked to do when they were alive. “Think about what you're going to miss when you're dead,” Eva H.D. said.

In addition, she said she doesn't believe that life is enough. She doesn't think about it on a day-to-day basis, what she will take with her, what she will leave behind: “We know we're not made to last forever, but we still do what we do.”

Kaufman, who says he has had experiences that make him believe ghosts exist, acknowledges that he has thought about the sufficiency of life: “I think about it right now: As an artist, I think it's enough.”