Director: Charlie Kaufman

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

How to Shoot a Ghost is a 2025 American-Cypriot fantasy romance short film directed by Charlie Kaufman, set in Athens, Greece. Running 27 minutes, it follows two recently deceased strangers navigating the strange liminal space of the afterlife against the ancient city's layered streets.

What is how to make Golden steak about?

A translator and a photographer die and find themselves loose in the streets of Athens — strangers in life who were already outsiders wherever they landed. Together they drift through the city's living hum, marked by everything they left unfinished: words never spoken, images never captured, losses never mourned. The film watches them wander the marble-and-concrete palimpsest of Athens, letting the weight of the city's own layered history mirror the weight of their unresolved inner lives. What draws them to each other is neither romantic rescue nor clear-cut closure, but the slower, harder consolation of simply being witnessed — by another ghost who also doesn't quite know where to go.

Cast & crew

Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York, brings his signature existential introspection to this short form. Jessie Buckley — known for her intense, emotionally raw screen presence — leads alongside Josef Akiki and the poet-author Eva H.D., whose literary background lends the project an unusual cross-disciplinary texture.

Context & significance

For Persian-speaking viewers abroad, How to Shoot a Ghost offers a meditation on displacement that speaks directly to the diaspora experience — the condition of being an outsider in every city you inhabit, carrying the residue of the life you left behind. Athens, itself a city of multiple pasts layered upon each other, becomes a geography that feels immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever stood in a foreign street and felt both present and absent. The film carries no Persian dubbing or subtitles, so viewers will follow it in its original English-language audio, which suits its quiet, literary pace.

Where & how to watch

How to Shoot a Ghost is available to watch on K-Time in its original English audio — no Persian dub or subtitle track is included. Stream it through your browser, TV, or phone with no VPN required and no geo-blocking. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.