With its brother-against-brother struggle for power and for the love of the same woman, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this look at life in the Port-au-Prince slums was a funky update of a classic tragedy, one of Shakespeare's history plays, say. But Danish filmmaker Asger Leth's gritty documentary is an all-too-real — and rarely seen — glimpse into the dark side of Aristide's Haiti.
The "ghosts" or, more accurately, les chimeres, are violent gang members who control Cite Soleil. Intended as an international showplace during Duvalier's corrupt reign, Cite's name, "Sun City," became bitterly ironic as it devolved into one of Haiti's poorest ghettos. The gang members, meanwhile, were allegedly hired by the now-deposed Aristide government to intimidate political opponents who eventually ousted him in late 2004. Leth had unprecedented access and began filming in Cite Soleil in February 2004, when the sprawling, overcrowded, garbage-filled neighborhood was run by five chimere chiefs who, through their armed foot soldiers, maintained control primarily through violence. Like mafia dons, they regarded their sectors as fiefdoms, riding through filthy streets in trucks, M16-toting tots in the backseat, and dispensing money and support as they chose. Leth profiles chiefs 2pac (like many chimeres, he worships U.S. hip-hop culture) and his younger brother, Bily. 2pac has hopes of becoming a recording artist — he oozes charisma, plays to the camera and raps over the phone to a visibly impressed Wyclef Jean — while Bily belongs to Aristide's Lavalas Party. Both claim to have been hired by the Lavalas as street soldiers in battles against antigovernment demonstrators, something the Aristide government has always strenuously denied. 2pac, however, has become disillusioned with Lavalas after a two-year prison stretch (he claims he was abandoned by Aristide) and there's trouble between 2pac and his brother, whom he loves but doesn't trust. As opposition forces, led by the former Haitian police chief Guy Phillipe and by Louis Jodel Chamblain, cut a violent trail through the countryside, inching ever closer to the capital and an inevitable military coup, Cite Soleil gets hotter. If the Aristide government falls, whatever support the armed and dangerous chimeres enjoy will go with it. Further complicating growing tensions between the brothers is Eleonore "Lele" Senlis, a French relief worker who's fallen in love with 2pac, even though it's Bily who's always loved her.
It's surprising the extent to which Leth is willing to demonize Aristide without offering concrete proof that he actually hired the chimeres to do his dirty work, but it's also clear that no real attempt was made to disarm them until after Aristide left the country. Inherently controversial, the film is nevertheless a rousing piece of documentary reportage, effectively shot — clearly at great risk to Leth and his intrepid cinematographers — edited and scored to a propulsive hip-hop soundtrack. The underlying political motivation may be unclear, but the violence and desperation of lives lived in something close to hell on earth is terrifyingly clear. (in English and subtitled Creole and French) leave a comment --Ken Fox