Ghosts of Cité Soleil (2006)

Synopsis
Danish documentarian Asger Leth’s powerful, disturbing film captures life and death during the last months of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s regime. In Port-au-Prince’s most desperately poor and dangerous neighborhoods, heavily armed street gangs known as chimères (“ghosts”) serve as the regime’s enforcers, trampling on the legal authority and terrorizing the political opposition. But a new, more brutal counter-revolution may soon end their reign. GHOSTS is as nightmarish, vivid and intense as a Jacobean tragedy; it focuses on the gangster 2pac, a would-be rap star (he has a wildly self-confident phone chat with Wyclef Jean) who, along with his brother (and rival) Bily, demonstrates a psychopathic arrogance and cruelty. But they also speak with heartbreaking eloquence about the plight of their country. Like every other Haitian, they yearn to leave the endless cycle of bloody violence behind. –LG (Denmark/U.S., 2006, 97m)