City of Ghosts

Director: Matthew Heineman

Country: Syria, USA

Running Time: 90′

London Premiere

Year: 2017

American filmmaker Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, EEFF 2015) embeds himself in the Syrian resistance, and returns with one of the documentaries of the year. In City of Ghosts, Heineman and his camera follow the rebels known as Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), citizen journalists who have risked their lives to report on the daily atrocities of ISIS. Forced from their homeland and working in exile, City of Ghosts addresses not only the necessity of documenting the brutality of Islamist extremism, but also the intricacies of a propaganda war in which they themselves have been labeled as terrorists. The result is not only one of the most hard-hitting accounts available of the reality of the Syrian conflict; but one of the most moving encounters with people whose lives are under daily threat, but who stand up to be counted anyway.