City of Ghosts

Shows the extent evil will go to. Emotional and empowering seeing the human connection.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

In March of 2012, the Arab Spring uprising occurred in the city of Raqqa, Syria, where Bashir Al Assad's tyrannical regime was overthrown, and the people made a grab for the independence and freedom that had been denied to them for so long. Unfortunately, it ended up creating a vacuum, that resulted in the Islamic State taking over and grinding the city to a halt, as they enforced their barbaric and savage 'caliphate.' Several men, however, calling themselves 'Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently', banded together and resolved to expose ISIS's savagery to the world, as a result enduring terrible sacrifice and placing their lives in danger.

While the rest of the world lives in a heightened sense of danger and alert over ISIS's next terror attack, it's still easy for life to carry on and go about their daily business. It's hard to picture a world where they are the total domineering force, a place which they have completely taken control of and imposed their savage, insane will on. And yet, if you were to ask any group of people to name the one place where this has happened, Raqqa would probably instantly spring to mind. Like Rwanda in the early 90s, it's the place everyone knows about, but we're all guilty of ignoring as long as we have our nice life.

Matthew Heineman, director of the equally enthralling 2015 drug-war drama Cartel Land, plunges us into this unimaginable world, with City of Ghosts, depicting the plight of a group of brave men living on the frontline of this devastating life, risking everything to highlight the atrocities of ISIS in their homeland. We are given unflinching access, as the terror group enact live executions in the streets, capture their friends and taunt them over the internet, including streaming the live murder of one of their fathers. These are educated men, from Raqqa's middle classes and trained journalists, who have to live life on the edge and constantly think on their feet, thinking one step ahead of their enemies.

Heineman has displayed a real talent for making these exposing, frontline dramas, of men and societies living on the edge, that keep you on the edge of your seat far more than any modern Hollywood dross ever could. ****

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....

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.

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.