A ringing phone can make an empty frame look as if it’s withholding evidence. In Katharine Round’s Ghost Town, the phone rings after dark in an unoccupied box. The eye looks for somebody who might answer it. One of the film’s taxi drivers recalls seeing figures crowd into a phone box after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. He thought they were trying to get home. The ring and the recollection have different claims on our belief, yet each makes the other harder to put out of mind. Round gets a great deal of suspense out of a sound that would be a nuisance in daylight.
The deer along the roads of Kamaishi pose the inverse problem. They’re plainly visible, and one driver takes them for divine messengers. Other people in the film are less sure about supernatural experiences, a disagreement the footage of the animals can do precisely nothing to settle. The sparsely lit streets bring to mind a noir in which an unoccupied patch of pavement might hold information the detective has missed. Here you can see what’s by the roadside and still have to decide what, if anything, to make of it. A deer is under very little obligation to clarify its position.
Round’s documentary spends just over an hour with four drivers and their passengers in the northeastern Japanese city. She installs cameras inside the cabs, where much of the film’s business is conducted in ordinary conversation. The setup has something of the look of surveillance, with a camera already in place to record whoever gets in. Its use is closer to eavesdropping.
Drivers tell of picking up passengers who later vanished from the back seat, and the camera is there for the telling. You can believe that a man remembers having someone in his cab and remain uncertain about whom he picked up. Round’s framing allows him the dignity of being heard without turning his account into a claim her footage can certify.
That distinction matters when the journalist Shiori Itō rides with the drivers. One talks about his days as a small-time tough. Another recalls gambling and nights out. Their disclosures bring some welcome friction to a film whose dark streets and ghost stories could easily consign everyone in town to the same mournful register.
There’s an ordinary social competence in these exchanges. Someone makes a living carrying strangers through streets he knows, and a stranger gives him occasion to talk about the person he used to be on those streets. The camera’s access to that history depends on what passes between two people who will part at the end of the ride.
The arrangement is generous to the speakers and less reliable as a source of momentum. Early on, the night footage makes another ride feel like a chance to learn something that will change the significance of what we’ve seen outside. That expectation weakens as the film settles into successive conversations with similar contours.
The compact running time keeps the lull modest, though there’s a perceptible change in how closely you attend to an image once you can anticipate the kind of exchange that will follow it. Round’s spare staging can make a phone ring feel like an event. The recurring cab conversations sometimes make a startling account feel like the next item of business.
The accounts themselves can differ sharply. One concerns a dream that warned someone away from a road the sea later covered. Another concerns frozen meals left uneaten after the water took half a home. The first makes survival sound like a decision whose full meaning became clear only afterward.
The second keeps an ordinary evening on the calendar, right down to what somebody could have had for dinner. There’s little for the camera to add to that detail. Its force lies in how casually a person can summon an intact domestic routine while describing the disappearance of the place that made it possible.
Kamaishi periodically tests its sirens and rehearses evacuation. Those sounds have an authority the ringing telephone lacks. They ask for a practical response, and the city has to keep making time to practice it. The drills bring the past into the present on a schedule, with roads to learn and somewhere to go. The dream about the submerged road can remain a matter of belief. Knowing which road to take when the siren sounds is work the living still have to do.
Ghost Town premiered at the Visions du Réel festival before arriving in UK cinemas on October 27, 2026. Directed by Katharine Round, the documentary captures a haunting portrait of a Japanese coastal town affected by the 2011 tsunami, where taxi cabs transform into moving confession booths as drivers and passengers converse about loss, memory, and ghosts.
Full Credits
Title: Ghost Town
Distributor: Dartmouth Films / Disobedient Films
Release date: April 2026 (Visions du Réel premiere) / October 27, 2026 (UK theatrical release)
Running time: 1 hour 4 minutes (64 minutes)
Director: Katharine Round
Writers: Katharine Round
Producers and Executive Producers: Katharine Round, Laura Shacham, Shiori Ito
Cast: Shiori Ito, Toru Konno, Yoshiji Iwasaki, Fumio Goto, Masaaki Koike, Yoichi Matsuda
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Jamie Quantrill
Editors: John Mister, Katharine Round
The Review
Ghost Town
Katharine Round lets a telephone ring in an empty frame and trusts us to supply the ghost. Her cab cameras are just as exacting. They give the drivers room to tell strange stories without asking us to take the footage as proof. The rides grow predictable, and the film gives some startling accounts the same weight as routine conversation. Still, few documentaries are this alert to the difference between what a witness tells you and what a picture makes you want to believe.
PROS
- Sparse night lighting and an unanswered ring create suspense.
- In-cab cameras give the drivers’ testimony room to breathe.
- The drivers’ personal histories give the film welcome tonal friction.
- Everyday details make the scale of loss tangible.
CONS
- The repeated ride structure grows predictable.
- Some startling accounts receive the same emphasis as routine exchanges.
