Spectre of a city in despair - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Spectre of a city in despair

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Danish director Asger Leth's documentary was shot in some danger in Cité Soleil, the slum area of Haiti. It follows the doubtful progress of two brothers who, as Chimere gang leaders, supported the abortive and eventually totally corrupt attempts of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, to take his benighted country from "misery into dignified poverty".

We are presented with a society in terminal breakdown. The brothers act like Mafia hoods among the wretched of the city, occasionally supported by aid workers who well know that they are only the best of a very bad bunch.

Leth shows us the horrendous nature of the period but fails to provide much necessary political analysis, without which it is even more deeply depressing than it might have been. The score is now being settled with the Chimeres, and one of the brothers is dead - hardly surprising, as the average lifespan in Cité Soleil scarcely breaches middle age.

Ghosts Of Cite Soleil
Cert: 15

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