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Admirable film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Asger Leth offers a rare glimpse into the world of Haiti's largest slum through through his remarkable recorded encounters with the Chimeres ('ghosts'), a loose organisation of gangs supporting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Among the Ghosts of Cite Soleil are two brothers, Bily and 2Pac, whose changing perspectives and fortunes are documented alongside Aristide's downfall in the face of an armed rebellion. Bily, 2Pac and their fellow gang-members patrol the streets of Cite Soleil to a soundtrack of rap music, fraternising one moment and racketeering the next; there are guns everywhere and the peace is never more than tenuous. Leth's own camera-work, itself shorn of commentary, is interspersed with newsreel footage of Aristide's worsening fortunes to provide a lucid backdrop to the unfolding drama on the street.Leth attained remarkable access when recording this film; we see 2Pac showering naked on two occasions and are witness to his startling and intimate affair with Lele, a French aid worker. Yet Leth does not reveal how this access is attained – he chooses not to show the seams of his documentary style and this leaves many important questions unanswered. Due to editing we do not hear Leth's voice, whether he is speaking to one of the Chimeres or to an expert on Haitian affairs. The lack of a 'presenter' – which contrasts with TV documentary series such as Unreported World – means that the subjects speak directly to us and not through a translator, but at the same time we are left with little clue of the questions that are being put across by the film-maker.In the absence of a presenter or commentator the camera takes on a greater role in interviewing people. In the presence of the camera, 2Pac and Bily are often full of bluster about their status in Cite Soleil. Such scenes are revealing about the self-image and social interaction in Cite Soleil but they draw the film away from the more detached style of observation employed by many documentaries. This is a film closely centred on Bily and 2Pac and those viewers expecting a lucid account of life in a Haitian slum will be disappointed. Ghosts of Cite Soleil nevertheless succeeds as a unique and compelling portrait of gang life in Haiti.

This is the realest piece of film I have ever watched. There's no glamour or icing over. You should watch this is you are fed up with the happy-ever-after, superhero and any other artificial stuff from Hollywood. Haiti's just a 2 hour flight from Miami,Florida and yet not much has been done to really help. How ironic it is that the US decides to send tens of thousands of troops halfway across the world to Iraq and Afghanistan to chase after ghosts hiding in a few hills when the real spooky and tangible evidence is right on the American doorstep. I commend the film makers' negotiating skills that enabled them to get face to face with the Chimeres chiefs. No acting here, this is real stuff, 100% authentic stuff.

The way I see it, there is nothing wrong with having a certain point of view when shooting a documentary...I recognize the right of the director to have his/her own perception on the the events that pass before his/her camera or all the reasons...The same way, the viewer can judge a documentary, as an artistic expression of reality, as a comment on events/people or just as "history on film"."Ghosts of Cité Soleil" is a perfect example for all the above. Thats why you can either love or hate it. I am sure no-one will see this and just be "ok" about it. And not because of the reality (?) it presents, but cause of the point of view, and on top of it, the characters in it.Its a piece of art no doubt, but it seemed like a mockumentary with real blood and real pain, cause the main characters are used as marionettes. And yes, those people are puppets the way they are used by the authorities of all kinds, but I would prefer if the director tried to record that, to just showing us a PLAY of his own.Its almost a shame.

When is the last time you saw a documentary with a soft-core love scene? The Ghosts of Cite Soleil makes this, with French "relief worker" Lele — working in an AIDS prevention program. Meanwhile, at the end of the feature, we find out that Bily's wife is HIV positive.The director is Danish, not German, but The Ghosts of Cite Soleil makes heroes of the made- in-Washington leaders of Haiti's 2004 coup in a manner reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl's adoration for Adolf Hitler in her famous film from the 1930's, Triumph of the Will. It builds a web of lies - lies of omission and lies of commission - into the "Big Lie" - a stylized, decontextualized, post-modern, sexy/violent piece of propaganda disguised as a documentary, full of guns but signifying nothing.The Ghosts of Cite Soleil claims to reveal the intimate personal lives of two gangsters who are brothers, Bily and 2Pac, in the deprived Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. When introducing them to several foreign journalists, filmmaker Kevin Pina (Harvest of Hope, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits) made the following comment, "Billy and I had a falling out over the question of his accepting money from foreign journalists to hype this question of Aristide and gangsters. The more they paid the more outlandish became his claims . . ."The director, Asger Leth, would have us believe the majority of people of Cite Soleil don't support President Aristide, and that those who do are forced to do so by armed gangsters. He ignores the fact that massive pro-Aristide demonstrations have taken place in Cite Soliel repeatedly since the coup. In one scene, a Cite Soleil crowd shouts, "Five full years, Five full years." Leth translates, but does not explain the significance - the people want Aristide back to finish his full five-year term.The film doesn't tell us that "Opposition leaders" Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker are also sweatshop owners who hate Aristide because he wanted to raise the minimum wage and make them pay taxes, which the rich don't do in Haiti.We're told President Aristide left voluntarily - no mention of his kidnapping by the U.S. military and his ongoing banishment from the continent. We see jubilant crowds of Aristide opponents waving as the coup makers drive into town, giving the impression most Haitians supported the coup. We don't see the U.S./French/Canadian soldiers guarding the route and making the entrance possible. We don't learn that Port-au-Prince was totally defended the day of Aristide's kidnapping, and the coup leaders would never have been able to take it over militarily. Instead Uncle Sam came to the rescue.We're not told that Louis Jodel Chamblain worked with the Duvalier dictatorship's brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that following a military coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the "operations guy" for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a military weapon.We're not told that Guy Phillipe is a former Haitian police chief who was trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s, or that the U.S. embassy admitted that Phillipe was involved in the transhipment of narcotics, one of the key sources of funds for paramilitary attacks on the poor in Haiti. He says the man he most admires is former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Leth portrays both of these men as credible spokespersons, not gangsters.Where did the weapons of the coup-makers come from? Who organized and trained them? Who spent tens of millions of dollars to create an "opposition movement" in Haiti? The United States is the real ghost in this film - it simply does not exist, except for its official version of events, scripted by George W. Bush, which The Ghosts of Cite Soleil follows scrupulously.The Ghosts of Cite Soleil plays like a manipulative music video, featuring music by Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, also the executive producer, who supported the coup and pushed the State Department line among the conscious hip-hop community and progressive celebrities in Hollywood. This contrasts to the principled stand of Danny Glover, Ruby Dee and her late, great husband Ossie Davis. You can almost hear the violins behind Chamblain, as he talks about his return to Haiti, but the music becomes dissonant and menacing behind Aristide or behind 2Pac and Bily, who speak English no less, but we never learn why. Like we never learn who, or why about anything in this movie, a piece of soft core propaganda, cleverly, consciously, and seductively made. It's being distributed by Sony, and may someday show at a theatre near you. People get ready, the Ghosts are coming.by Charlie Hinton