Ghosts Of Cité Soleil Review

We’re all used to watching pictures of a messy war being fought on ramshackle streets, but nothing can prepare you for Ghosts of Cité Soleil.

We’re all used to watching pictures of a messy war being fought on ramshackle streets, but nothing can prepare you for Ghosts of Cité Soleil.

In 2004, Danish filmmaker Asger Leth secured widespread access to Cité Soleil, a slum of crushing poverty, Haitian hip-hop, voodoo magic and state-funded thuggery that the United Nations has called ‘the most dangerous place on earth’. It’s clear from the first frame that the director is in his element.

2Pac and Bily are charismatic brothers, two of the five leaders of Cité Soleil’s ‘Chimères’, or ‘Ghosts’; a secret army of violent young men armed by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to provide cut-throat enforcement against rebels, rivals and protesters.

Theirs are harsh and tawdry lives confusingly split between political allegiance and basic survival. 2Pac is proud of his special powers, yet sings illicit protest songs against the man he fights for. Similarly, Bily has political aspirations and dreams of peace, but his idea of disciplining one of his ‘soldiers’ is to put a bullet in his foot.

The slums bristle with old guns and even older grudges, and the film’s sense of embedded authenticity – all tinderbox tension and whistling bullets – is testament to Leth and co-director Milos Loncarevic’s incredible bravery.

Yet this is not so much a piece of front-line journalism as it is a celebration of the brothers, particularly 2Pac with his musical aspirations and languid, lyrical patois. Long close shots of his high cheekbones and the taut muscles on his naked torso betray the filmmakers’ swooning fascination with their subject.

In this respect they are not unlike Lele, a French aid worker who is happy to be filmed in 2Pac’s bed. She implores the brothers not to fight for Aristide, but is, at the same time, drunk on the romance of their lawless world.

Amongst the swagger, however, and the naïve glamour of boys’ own adventure, are scenes of incredibly lucid reality. A baby is pulled from its mother’s body and marched away by its feet, a metal clamp still hanging from the umbilical cord.

It is an inglorious introduction to the world for a potential Chimère; a person who may make bad decisions and do terrible things, but who is damned from the start by a vicious cycle of poverty, violence and corruption.