Ghosted (HKLGFF 2026)

Grief has a way of following you across oceans. Hamburg artist Sophie Schmitt is undone by the sudden, unexplained death of her young Taiwanese lover, Ai-ling, and travels to Taipei with a video installation built in her memory. There she is pursued by Mei-li, a beguiling and persistent journalist who wants far more than an interview, and who soon materialises, unannounced, on Sophie’s Hamburg doorstep. As seduction shades into investigation, past and present blur, and Monika Treut’s cross-cultural mystery drifts elegantly toward the supernatural, steeped in Taiwanese ghost lore and the ache of unfinished love. The first German-Taiwanese co-production, shot between the night markets of Taipei and the grey light of Hamburg, GHOSTED premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama and remains one of Treut’s most atmospheric works: a sapphic ghost story where the dead, like desire, refuse to stay buried.