City of Ghosts

2017 "Our words are stronger than their weapons."
7.4| 1h30m| R| en| More Info
Released: 14 July 2017 Released
Producted By: Our Time Projects
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://cityofghosts.com
Synopsis

With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

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aaakachh I felt like some of the scene were fake like how can you see your father get shot in the head and then you say i dont knowgood movie ,fake scene was not needed
valleyjohn 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.
mirandelaxxl After ISIS defeat, suddenly we get "heroes" who make an secret U turn then claim to be "brave". I am one of those who followed week by week the whole drama in Syria long before this shameless "documentary" come to the light. One cant be fooled again when in first 5 minutes the author try to "convince" us, with no shame at all, ISIS appear from nothing, like an evil incarnation. Matthew Heineman selective memory choose to falsify the history, by keeping all in dark when it come to Al- Nusra, Al- Jaball and other dozens of small terror groups born from the fake FSA, groups who receive intense support on logistics, hardware, financial, etc from US and so called "coalition". The same terror groups who shortly after "revolution" turn to ISIS and integrate all on this cancer so called "caliphate". This is not journalism, its just an shameless piece of defamatory propaganda who try to avoid any responsibility of the West in the creation and spread of ISIS. Today we all know who bring the terrorists on Syria, who pay for weapons, who train them, and, most important, we all know was not a real "revolution" like this piece of trash try to brainwash us, but yes just an failed "Libya 2.0" coup-de-eta . The REAL heroes are the people of Syria, who die defending their country against of jihadi animals.
Paul Allaer "City of Ghosts" (2017 release; 93 min.) is a documentary about the city of Raqqa under the dictatorship of ISIS, and a group of citizen journalists determined to expose the atrocities to the world. As the movie opens, we see one of the citizen journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) getting ready to accept the 2015 CPJ International Press Freedom Award in New York. We then go back in time, to the Arab Spring events, when Raqqa ran the Assad regime out of town, only to then get overrun by ISIS. A small group of citizen journalists puts clandestine footage on the internet, showing what ISIS really is doing. Fearing for their lives, some of them flee Raqqa (to Turkey and Germany), "and that's when the real war between us and ISI began", says one of them. At this point we're 15 min. into the documentary.Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from producer-writer-director Matthew Heineman, whose previous documentary, the outstanding "Cartel Land" got an Oscar nomination (and should've won, but that's just me). As soon as I saw his name associated with this, I knew we would be in for one riveting film. And I was right. Filmed mostly in 2014-15, it gives a chilling account of what the ISIS regime truly is like. Beware: there is gruesome and shocking footage (much of which was shown blurred in US mainstream media) so this is not for the faint of heart. But it is so important that the world becomes better aware what really is going on there. The real heroes of this film are of course the RBSS journalists who are secretly filming the events in Raqqa and then transmit the footage to the RBSS journalists in Turkey and Germany. Each and every one of them somehow needs to deal with living each day knowing that ISIS would like to do nothing better than to kill every single one of them. I cannot even begin to imagine what that must feel like."City of Ghosts" premiered to universal critical acclaim at this year's Sundance Film Festival. No idea why it's taken so long for this to get released in theaters, but the film finally opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Sunday early afternoon screening where I saw this at turned out to be a private screening. I literally was the only person there, sad to say. I happen to love a good documentary, and when it is about a topic as important as this one, that only makes it better. If you have any interest in understanding what is going on in Raqqa, Syria, by all means make sure to catch this movie, be it in the theater, on VD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray.