Director: Charlie Kaufman

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Josef Akiki, Eva H.D.

How to Shoot a Ghost is a 2025 American-Cypriot fantasy romance short directed by Charlie Kaufman, running 27 minutes. Set among the ancient streets of Athens, it follows two young people who have recently died and now must reckon with the unresolved weight of their lives in the afterworld.

What is How to Make Ghormeh Sabzi Chef Tara about?

A translator and a photographer, strangers in life, cross paths in the streets of Athens after death. Both were outsiders in the living world, each carrying the residue of longings they never fully acted on and errors they never fully corrected. Adrift in a city that hums with centuries of layered history, the two begin walking together through neighborhoods that pulse with both the ancient and the contemporary. Their conversations circle the difficult questions — what we leave behind, what we wished we had said, how beauty persists even after everything. The film refuses easy comfort, instead sitting with its characters in the honest uncertainty of an existence that has already ended but refuses to feel finished.

Cast & crew

Charlie Kaufman, the writer-director known for psychologically intricate work, brings his signature blend of melancholy and philosophical wit to this short form. Jessie Buckley leads the cast alongside Josef Akiki and Eva H.D. The performances are built on restraint — quiet glances and hesitant dialogue that carry more weight than exposition.

Context & significance

For Persian-speaking viewers in the diaspora, How to Shoot a Ghost resonates on a particular frequency. Iranians who have left their homeland know intimately the sensation of being an outsider — of carrying a life whose full context exists somewhere else, among people who are no longer present. The film's Athens setting, layered with ruins and the ongoing noise of the living city, mirrors the experience of living between worlds. Kaufman's short asks what remains of a person's longing once the urgency of daily life has dissolved. That question has a specific gravity for diaspora audiences. The film streams in its original English audio without Persian subtitles or dubbing, so viewers comfortable with English will find the most direct path into its quiet, searching mood.

Where & how to watch

How to Shoot a Ghost is available on K-Time. It streams in original English audio — no Persian dubbing or subtitles are available for this title. Watch on the web, on your TV دستگاه, or on your phone, with no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, and cancel anytime.