DESCRIBED by the UN as "the most dangerous place on earth", Cité Soleil is a teeming slum in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Danish director Asger Leth confirms that in this close-up documentary, which presents an unprepossessing picture of the place in all its poverty, squalor and chaos, its lawlessness and ever-present threat of violence and death.
Leth shot the movie during 2004, the last year in the reign of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who in 1991 became Haiti's first democratically elected president. The focus is on two brothers who lead a ruthless gang known as the Chimeres (the ghosts of the title) and, we are told, the secret army of Aristide and the Lavalas party.
One of the brothers redefines the term gangster rapper, being both an unscrupulous gangster and an aspirant rap performer. He names himself 2Pac after the murdered US rapper. 2Pac admires Wyclef Jean, the Haitian rapper who first achieved US success with The Fugees.
Jean provides the soundtrack for Ghosts of Cité Soleil, on which he was an executive producer, and features briefly in the film when 2Pac calls him and performs some of his own hip- hop compositions over the phone.
2Pac's brother Bily is more pragmatic and even aspires to become president some day. Blithely unconcerned that the camera is watching, Bily casually shoots one of his soldiers in the foot for not showing him enough respect.
This is one of many instances in which Leth and his young Serbian cameraman, Milos Loncarvic, are allowed unusually open access to film the brothers' criminal and personal activities. It helps that 2Pac clearly glories in being the centre of attention, bragging and swaggering for the camera. In addition, Leth draws on a conduit, Lele, who is captioned as a French relief worker but seems to spend most of her time supporting and encouraging the brothers, and becomes 2Pac's lover.
Leth is as uncritical and unquestioning of Lele's behaviour as he is of 2Pac and Bily, and this undermines the urgency of the drama that unfolds in his footage and in the US newsreel material used quite extensively to explain events as Aristide's regime crumbles.
