In 2004, documentarian Asger Leth, the son of Danish filmmaker and Haiti resident Jorgen Leth, secured the trust of rival sibling gang leaders in Haiti’s Port-au-Prince slum Cite Soleil to show the underbelly of a place that the United Nations sites as "the most dangerous place on Earth."
Bily and his brother 2pac are both supporters of Aristide, and as such lord over different sections of the 500,000 people slum as members of Aristide’s personal army of "chimeres" (ghosts), so called due to their short life expectancy.
Lele is a blonde French relief worker who facilitates direct to camera commentary from 2pac and Bily, with whom she alternates romantic affairs.
Wyclef Jean helped produce the film, and scored the music that provides a pulsating backdrop for the spontaneous violence that constantly erupts at great danger to the filmmakers.
As a native born Haitian, Wyclef Jean (former Fugees bandleader) is a role model that 2pac communicates with by telephone for feedback on the rap songs he writes.
It’s telling when Jean describes the way Haitians have been influenced by rap as music that they will "live by and die by."
Indeed, rap’s slang vocabulary of violence seems to be the only way that 2pac and Bily are capable of relating to the oppressive poverty and violence around them.
"Ghosts of Cite Soleil" is a raw sociological study that discloses innumerable levels of social disorder in Haiti.
The desperation and opportunism on display is disgusting, as it is intriguing.
Not Rated, 86 mins.
