City of Ghosts

Having won a national award for journalism, I was feeling really pumped about me until I saw the journalists in City of Ghosts. Here are heroes who leave me breathless in awe of their courage fighting Isis in its home, Raqqa. A formerly docile town, it changed with the emergence of ISIS tanks in 2014 after the remarkable Arab Spring of 2012.

The citizen journalists, RBSS (Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently), begin fighting in earnest when they realize ISIS has taken control because of the vacuum of power after that Spring. This doc is almost exclusively a chronicle of their struggle to remain viable after ISIS zeroed in on them and began torturing and beheading relatives and friends.

So the heroism is much more personal than fighting ISIS; it is about good people combating an implacable foe at the expense of their families and themselves. When the doc shows a fighter watching a video of his father being assassinated and when at the end of the film a fighter shakes in guilt and fear over having survived and his friends didn't because he escaped from Raqqa, the audience is witnessing a reality show like no other our poor commercial fluff gives us in that name.

The depressing element of this is how successful ISIS has been because of the Hollywood production type elements in these gruesome and seductive promos. Assassinations are edited with the expertise of your garden-variety super-hero blockbuster.

City of Ghosts features fighters who are ghosts of their former happy lives, but they are heroes the likes of which we have long forgotten.

"City of Ghosts" (2017 release; 93 min.) is a documentary about the city of Raqqa under the dictatorship of ISIS, and a group of citizen journalists determined to expose the atrocities to the world. As the movie opens, we see one of the citizen journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) getting ready to accept the 2015 CPJ International Press Freedom Award in New York. We then go back in time, to the Arab Spring events, when Raqqa ran the Assad regime out of town, only to then get overrun by ISIS. A small group of citizen journalists puts clandestine footage on the internet, showing what ISIS really is doing. Fearing for their lives, some of them flee Raqqa (to Turkey and Germany), "and that's when the real war between us and ISI began", says one of them. At this point we're 15 min. into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from producer-writer-director Matthew Heineman, whose previous documentary, the outstanding "Cartel Land" got an Oscar nomination (and should've won, but that's just me). As soon as I saw his name associated with this, I knew we would be in for one riveting film. And I was right. Filmed mostly in 2014-15, it gives a chilling account of what the ISIS regime truly is like. Beware: there is gruesome and shocking footage (much of which was shown blurred in US mainstream media) so this is not for the faint of heart. But it is so important that the world becomes better aware what really is going on there. The real heroes of this film are of course the RBSS journalists who are secretly filming the events in Raqqa and then transmit the footage to the RBSS journalists in Turkey and Germany. Each and every one of them somehow needs to deal with living each day knowing that ISIS would like to do nothing better than to kill every single one of them. I cannot even begin to imagine what that must feel like.

"City of Ghosts" premiered to universal critical acclaim at this year's Sundance Film Festival. No idea why it's taken so long for this to get released in theaters, but the film finally opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Sunday early afternoon screening where I saw this at turned out to be a private screening. I literally was the only person there, sad to say. I happen to love a good documentary, and when it is about a topic as important as this one, that only makes it better. If you have any interest in understanding what is going on in Raqqa, Syria, by all means make sure to catch this movie, be it in the theater, on VD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray.

For the briefest of moments, we were certain that the combination of pure evil and military might died in a German bunker at 1945. there are many examples in the 21st century to provide us with clear cut proof that it hasn't. we don't need City of ghosts to be reminded of that but even in the age of full transparency evil can still thrive and probably better than ever before.

City of ghosts centers around a subservient group of ordinary Syrians who found themselves in unordinary times and became journalists who report against the takeover, cleansing and terrorizing of the Syrian city of Raqaa by ISIS. ISIS entered the city on 2013 in the midst of the civil war that still goes on and immediately called the citizens to cooperate or face the consequences. Those highly unsubtle threats were recorded and were broadcast by a group mention before. This groups is known as RBSS (acronym of : Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently). ISIS who's agenda is to show that the newly conquered city is blooming, finds in RBSS a cardinal threat and starts in brutal campaigns that include murdering activists of the organization (even those who fled Syria) and in many cases, murdering the kin. ISIS is not the first organization to launch brutal and senseless murders but is different than any other militia in both there propensity to flaunt it and in their high production value of their brutal videos.

RBSS members are normative citizens and none of the people presented in the film, lodging in undisclosed location in Germany has a death wish. The eminent threat is permeating to their personal life and although they never say it aloud, it brings doubts to their commitment. A doubt any human being can understand

The direction is minimalist and is comprised almost exclusively of the testimony of these activists. No English voice-over is used for background purposes or contemplation. The movie, wisely, leaves the contemplation to the viewer.

The movie is so engrossing that in the few moments that I wasn't transfixed to the screen, I thought that everyone should watch this beautiful (albeit hard to watch) documentary that proves once again that world indifference can lead to unfathomable horror and even in the day of modern communication, we still can't see what's going on in many parts of the globe. But the most important point the movie makes is that history can repeat itself and with ISIS recruiting adults and children with funding and a fake sense of purpose, a Nazi like threat to humanity is not just material for the history channel, it could very well be reported in the evening news

10 out of 10 in my FilmOmeter

City of Ghosts is a documentary feature film that goes behind enemy lines in Syria to follow the citizen journalist collective Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently as they attempt to expose the human rights violations by ISIS and fight the terrorist group's misinformation campaigns in their home country. This group of people face the realities of life undercover, on the run, and in exile, risking their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today I was putting off watching this documentary because I wasn't sure the extent of barbarism that was going to be shown on screen and when you think about it that is ridiculous. We should all see what is happening in Syria but sadly most of us turn a blind eye to what it happening. As it happens this film isn't too graphic. It doesn't show the ISIS videos of beheadings or anything like that instead it focuses on this amazing group of people. What I find incredibly sad is that not only are friends and family of this group dying all the time but when some of them escape to Europe to continue their online fight with ISIS , they are treated like lepers by far right wing groups. The documentary itself does fall off a bit in the last third and is a little bit self congratulatory but to be honest these people deserve all the credit they can get.

This documentary is based around the media group RBSS and as such whilst a fascinating account of a group of proud and brave individuals it doesn't have the scope to be truly great filmmaking. Some of the footage is truly shocking and for those that want to reject immigrants, political asylum seekers they really need to watch this film. They obviously won't though and you can't help feel this is preaching to the converted. My heart goes out to these guys and their beloved city though....