City of Ghosts

Oh God, more car­nage from Syr­ia… Does it make you a bad per­son to feel some­what daunt­ed by this new fea­ture doc? The ongo­ing geopo­lit­i­cal clus­ter­fuck over there is so bru­tal, so intractable, so seem­ing­ly hope­less, that our com­pas­sion glands and out­rage mus­cles are more or less worn out by now.

That’s the major obsta­cle faced by any film­mak­er try­ing to stim­u­late the con­science of an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence. By show­cas­ing the plight of a group of endan­gered cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists from ISIS-occu­pied Raqqa, how­ev­er, direc­tor Matthew Heine­man gets through the blasé́ bar­ri­er by con­nect­ing to the human­i­ty of a group of ordi­nary indi­vid­u­als caught up in an utter­ly inhu­man situation.

Some his­to­ry first. Once, this city on the Euphrates was a pleas­ant, hos­pitable place, but in 2012 it became a cen­tre for pro-democ­ra­cy protests against the Assad régime, gal­vanis­ing even pre­vi­ous­ly non-polit­i­cal folk to take to the streets. Cue a vio­lent crack­down by the Syr­i­an mil­i­tary, fol­lowed by the city’s ISIS takeover – pre­sent­ing them­selves as lib­er­a­tors who’d free the peo­ple from tyranny.

Well, we now know how that turned out, as ISIS made Raqqa into a fear-rid­den hold­ing pen marked by pover­ty and depri­va­tion. The only sto­ry reach­ing the out­side world, how­ev­er, was the ISIS pro­pa­gan­da ver­sion, until a group of stu­dents and teach­ers – every­day types who’d pre­vi­ous­ly been pro-democ­ra­cy sup­port­ers – decid­ed to show what was real­ly hap­pen­ing on the streets. So, at great per­son­al risk, they shot video and post­ed pic­tures on Face­book and Twit­ter under the moniker ​‘Raqqa is Being Slaugh­tered Silently’.

Much of what they revealed end­ed up in the inter­na­tion­al media, and as such their endeav­ours fit in with the over­all post-Arab Spring nar­ra­tive of cit­i­zen empow­er­ment through smart­phone and inter­net tech­nol­o­gy, and of course the wider war of ideas being waged online. Here ISIS pur­veys its slick Hol­ly­wood-style recruit­ment videos and RBSS coun­ters with the ugly truth of life inside the caliphate.

As in his pre­vi­ous offer­ing, the US- Mex­i­can bor­der chron­i­cle Car­tel Land, direc­tor Heine­man clear­ly gains the trust of his sub­jects, and shows the emo­tion­al toll behind the sad­ly too-famil­iar images of car­nage. When one of the team is cap­tured, tor­tured and pub­licly exe­cut­ed by ISIS, it’s time for Aziz, Mohamed and com­padres to ship out of Raqqa and keep the mul­ti­me­dia flow­ing from Turkey and Ger­many while still receiv­ing dai­ly reports from brave reporters inside the occu­pied city.

As the team sit tap­ping away on screens, they seem pret­ty much like you or I, except that ISIS videos fea­ture their actu­al fam­i­ly mem­bers being killed on cam­era in revenge. For all the hor­rors on dis­play, it’s the imme­di­ate inti­ma­cy of tears being shed for their loved ones, as well as the debil­i­tat­ing stress of liv­ing under con­stant death threats, which real­ly hit home. As we reg­is­ter the suf­fer­ing and the resilience of these reluc­tant heroes while keep­ing faith with truth and jus­tice as the incal­cu­la­ble tur­moil con­tin­ues, it puts a human face, a point of con­tact, on the often over­whelm­ing enor­mi­ty of Syria’s nation­al tragedy.