I was browsing through the vast domain of “Internet” (as a reporter called this phenomena in a 1993 news report) and came across stills from a film that I thought at first were from a “City of God” rip off. I looked closer and saw that this was indeed a film about a ruthless gang of youths that ruled the slums of an impoverished city with brutal violence and that they wanted to rule it all one day. The difference being that this one is real. Sure City of God used real locations and people to make their fantastic film but the accounts were a work of fiction.
Ghosts of Cite Soleil focuses on two brothers, 2Pac and Bily (only one “L”), who are heads of one of the gangs that go by the name of chimeres, or ghosts as people view them as already dead. They work for former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide as sort of a fucked up version of the secret police to keep the fear of authority in the poor, uneducated citizens of the Hatian city, deemed the most dangerous place on earth by the UN.
2Pac and Bily both have dreams, 2Pac not surprisingly a rapper and Bily wants to become president one day. But will they even live to become a rapper or a president? Live in the streets of Cite Soleil is no joke and death is all around them. The reason people see Chimeres members as already dead is because their life expectancy is very very low indeed.
Danish filmmaker Asger Leth got unprecedented access to the boys and filmed them for a few of months of 2004, the year that Aristide finally hauled ass and left Haiti. What happened to the boys after that you’ll have to find out by seeing this film where ever you can.
The reason I’m posting this is not because I’ve seen it but because this looks like a fascinating documentary that’s sure to hit you in the gut and wanted to point it out to people. It was shown at last year’s TIFF but wasn’t reviewed on this site as far as I know. Sony BMG have picked up the rights for this and according to IMDB.COM it’s scheduled for release in June of this year as a limited release. Hopefully there will be a DVD shortly after that. It's also worth mentioning that rapper Wyclef Jean executive produced this and was involved in the score for it as well.
So did anyone here see this flick? If so how was it?
Ghosts of Cite Soleil (homepage with clips, photos and more)
I hope you know that many of the characters in City of God were based on real people and in instances such as in many films different people were condensed in to one character. Best example being Knockout Ned who was a real person and is seen in the credits and Rocket who is a photographer who was a friend of Paulo Lins, the writter of the book and novel.
Hey,
I saw this doc at a market screening in Berlin earlier this month - and the film completely blew me away. In a good/bad way. The film is an astonishingly close look at "the world's most dangerous place". What unfolds in the film is so much on the edge that I had a hard time believing it - though I knew it was all documentary material. The film comes highly recommended, but it is a hard one. Quite gruesome - among scenes that left me shattered, there's a sequence where a child is born... it is quite alike the way Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (main character of über-fiction film "Perfume") is born: In mud and shit. It's not really connected to the story, but it gives way to a portrayal of this slum of Port-au-Prince (capital of Haiti), a place in need of aid.
Which it gets, though in the form of a French aid worker who, with ethics and borderlines that is questionable, engages in the lives of these gang leaders to such a degree that I asked myself: Where does the aid worker in her end, and the gangstress begin?
The film is unique, and keeps to glued to the screen all throughout. Should be able to play well in cinemas... lets see how distribution goes. A DVD purchase is not out of the question on my part. Interesting film.