Ghosts of Cité Soleil (2006, documentary) - A. Leth debuts with formidable documentary

♥♥♥♥♥

 

Snaps from the film behind a strong, unclothed, Haitian man holding a rifle make up this dark poster for Asger Leth and Milos Loncarevic's Ghosts of Cité Soleil

In the slums of Haiti, the leaders are the local 'Chimeres'; gangster-rapping, gun-toting men whom the poor country's president at times hires for security. Two brothers that are such leaders now come at odds with each other and with the people...

 

Ghosts of Cité Soleil is written by writer/co-director/co-photographer Asger Leth (Move On (2012)), who co-directed it with Milos Loncarevic.

It is an incredible documentary. The slums of Haiti seem as alien to a privileged Scandinavian like me as would a foreign planet, and the to some degree self-created hell that the country is in is despairing. The work that Leth and Co. have done here is staggering; practically because the shoot has obviously taken place under significant personal risk, and narratively because the documentary deals with two protagonists (and one French assistant nurse, who risks her life to live and assist in an area of great deprivation) who don't deserve our sympathy: They are godless, gun-crazed murderers, who stand in the way of their country's improvement, essentially uneducated hoodlums. - But Leth, Locarevic and Co. still manage to capture them in such various situations that their humanity still unmistakably peaks through. - Still without the film coming across as apologetic for it.

Ghosts of Cité Soleil is wildly courageous, eminent documentary filmmaking.

Watch a 2-minute clip from the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 218k $

= Uncertain

[Ghosts of Cité Soleil premiered 1 September (Telluride Film Festival, Colorado) and runs 86 minutes. Shooting took place in Haiti during a time of civil war. 2Pac, the rapping of the two brothers in the film, was shot and killed three weeks after the filmmakers left Haiti. The film opened #57 to a 7k $ first weekend in 1 cinema in North America, where it widened to 3 theaters but didn't attain a higher rank, grossing 48k $ (22 % of the total gross). The other two recorded markets were Leth's native Denmark with 125k $ (57.3 %) and the UK with 44k $ (20.2 %). Leth returned with Man on a Ledge (2012); Loncarevic has not returned with a credit in film or TV. Ghosts of Cité Soleil is certified fresh at 78 % with a 6.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Ghosts of Cité Soleil?