The most remarkable scene in Matthew Heineman’s new film City of Ghosts – indeed, possibly the most remarkable scene in any documentary you’re likely to see this year – takes place in an unfurnished German apartment. Hamoud al-Mousa, a founder member of the citizen journalist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) sits staring at a laptop, watching a video of his father’s murder at the hands of Islamic State militants. The killing has been filmed in the manner of a Michael Bay movie, bombastic and slickly edited. It is intended to strike fear into Hamoud – and any others willing to expose the many atrocities committed by the terrorist group. Hamoud however refuses to be cowed. “I watch the video a lot. It gives me strength,” he says.

Hamoud’s fortitude in the face of such brutality will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the work of RBSS. Formed initially to document the assault carried out by the Assad regime on their home city, the group turned their attention to Isis when the group took control of Raqqa in 2014 and declared it the capital of their new caliphate. Since then RBSS has, through social media postings and cameraphone footage, shone a light on a regime that is out of reach of western journalists. They have done so at enormous personal cost: several members of the group have been executed, as well as friends and family members. Hamoud’s father is just one of many victims.

Hamoud, whose father and brother were murdered in Raqqa by Isis as a warning for him to stop reporting. Photograph: Dogwoof Films

City of Ghosts is the kind of visceral real life story Heineman is becoming known for. His previous work, Cartel Land, was a gripping and sometimes horrifying dispatch from the frontline of the war on drugs. Filmed on either side of the Mexican border, it followed both Mexican drug cartels and the vigilante groups trying to stop them. As a work of documentary filming it offered up some astonishing moments of journalistic daring – such as the scene where Heineman finds his way into a cartel meth lab in the forests of Michoacán – but crucially never lost sight of the horrible human toll of the conflict.

Like Cartel Land before it, City of Ghosts finds a way of providing a personal dimension to an intractable and seemingly unending conflict. “I love the challenge of taking these really complicated subjects and trying to humanise them,” he says. “I didn’t set out to make a sequel to Cartel Land, although to some degree it is a sequel, insofar as it’s about everyday citizens rising up against evil.”

While City of Ghosts is no less compelling than its predecessor, Heineman was forced to take a more passive role in its creation. Going anywhere near Raqqa was obviously a no-no – “I would have been killed instantly” – so instead he relied on footage smuggled out of the city by affiliates of RBSS. The scenes captured are by turns nightmarish and instructive: mass executions illustrate the regime of fear the group strives to instil, while scenes of queues at food banks paint a different picture to that of the glorious caliphate sold by the jihadists. “The name of the group says it all: Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently – there’s no information going into the city, there’s no information coming out,” says Heineman. “So if it wasn’t for them we truly wouldn’t know what was happening.”

‘Propaganda is one of the most evil tools humans have used against humans’ … Matthew Heineman. Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

Heineman’s own footage, meanwhile, largely takes place in the apartments allocated as safe houses for RBSS, whose members were forced to flee Raqqa as soon as Isis heard about their organisation. The group settled in Turkey, close to the Syrian border, but many members elected to move again following the assassination of Naji Jerf, a Syrian journalist who acted as a spiritual godfather to the group. Now most of RBSS are based in undisclosed locations within Germany, where they receive dispatches from undercover affiliates still operating in Raqqa.



Making people in safe houses come alive was a huge challenge, so he filmed tearful reunions, snowball fights and dancing

“That was a huge challenge as a film-maker,” he says. “How to make these safe houses feel alive, when for the most part it was a bunch of guys sitting around on computers and cellphones smoking cigarettes.” The solution Heineman landed on was to focus on the “drama happening in their interactions, in their faces”. Over the months he spent following RBSS, Heineman slowly gained their trust, and was able to capture them at their most uninhibited: tearful reunions at the airport, a snowball fight between the group, one member dancing joyfully with his partner.

“So often people like these guys are typecast as either terrorists or victims,” he says. “There’s a vast majority of people who are neither. So I really wanted to show the members of RBSS as human beings, as people who laugh and love and hug and cry, and not just make caricatures out of them.”

Crucial, too, was offering a corrective to the propaganda videos put out by Isis, which characterise RBSS as apostates and traitors. One of the most fascinating elements of City of Ghosts is the thoroughly modern media war being waged by both sides, via messaging apps and social media accounts. It’s a battle over shareability, over who can get their message out across the internet as widely and effectively as possibly.

“So much of this film is about image-making, the power of images; and intellectually I was drawn into this story because I was fascinated by this war of ideas, this war of propaganda,” says Heineman. “In my humble opinion, propaganda is one of the most evil tools humans have used against humans throughout history, to justify wars, justify atrocities, justify evil. Isis has taken it to a new extreme.”

Civilians from Raqqa, who fled fighting between US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants, in a dusty refugee camp. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP

In their films Isis have weaponised the tics and rhythms of the modern blockbuster, presenting a highly stylised vision of militant life. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that these films utilise the 12-step “hero’s journey” plot structure found in Star Wars or Titanic. Heineman understands why these films can be appealing to “disaffected or disenfranchised or lost people. It looks exciting. It makes people think, ‘Oh, wow, I can join this gang, I can become part of a movement, I can walk around with guns, all in the name of doing something important.’

“It’s like a video game, or a tentpole movie. It feels unreal. And so watching that video [of Hamoud’s father’s death] through the eyes of the son of the man who was killed really was a very difficult thing to film. But it allowed you to really feel that pain and that horror.”

It’s one of several scenes that make for difficult viewing. City of Ghosts rarely shies away from showing the extremity of Isis’s actions, moments of violence that would be blurred out on news reports. Some may question the validity of showing such gruesome footage, or suggest that it does the terrorists’ job for them but Heineman argues that they are vital in helping people comprehend the realities of life under Isis.

“Imagine walking out of the hotel we’re sat in now and there are a bunch of heads on the fence,” he says “Imagine walking outside and seeing people crucified. That’s what the citizens of Raqqa face every day. So, for me it was important to allow audience members to really empathise and understand.”

‘Pain and horror’ … another RBSS citizen journalist in hiding. Photograph: AP

Heineman says he’s still in touch with the members of RBSS, who are continuing to report on the travails of Raqqa, though the situation is slowly changing: last month US-backed forces surrounded the city, trapping Isis inside. A breakthrough looks imminent.



These guys are fighting an ideology that has been indoctrinated into a whole generation of children across the world

Yet, whatever the fate of their home city in the weeks to come, RBSS’s mission is far from over. “These guys, they’re fighting an ideology, and that ideology will live on long past this battle for Raqqa. It’s been indoctrinated into a whole generation of children. It’s been indoctrinated into individuals across the world, as we saw in Manchester, Paris, Orlando.

“More and more, as Isis has lost ground in Mosul, in Iraq, and is losing ground in Syria, we’re going to see attacks across the west,” he adds. “I think we, as a society, a global community, we as governments need to figure out ways to combat Isis not just as a military force, but as an idea.”

RBSS understand that better than most. As Hamoud says in the film: “A camera is more powerful than a weapon.”