Matthew Heineman’s return to Sundance after his Oscar-nominated Cartel Land is a triumphant one. Where his previous film was a journalistic masterclass in taking access to the extreme, City of Ghosts instead turns the camera on heroic journalists themselves. In doing so, Heineman may have made the definitive contemporary documentary about the tragedy of Syria, as well as an epoch-defining piece on modern media tactics.



The film tells the story of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), a group of citizen journalists who take great risks in documenting and releasing video, photo and written testimony of Islamic State atrocities in their home city. RBSS have been lauded by journalism organisations over the world, and the film opens on the bow-tied activists receiving a standing ovation in New York. However, Heineman resists romanticising RBSS – it’s clear from the first shot in the back of the head we witness, in surreptitious grainy video, that their cause is one of great personal sacrifice. While RBSS might be well known now, the impact on them as individuals isn’t. This is as much a documentary about activists struggling to hold themselves together as it is about Isis terror.

The bulk of the story takes place away from Raqqa, the founders having had to flee to Turkey and Germany. That they are not safe in the former is one of the tragedies of the film, with perhaps the greater tragedy that even in Germany they’re treated with disrespect by marching anti-refugee groups. Worse than that, Isis have called for the killing of the RBSS founders wherever they flee to. At the end of the film, one of them shakes uncontrollably with trauma and guilt at being one of those who got out of Raqqa when many of his sources are unlikely to leave alive.

The activists are clearly comfortable with Heineman, who is an invisible presence – after all, they’ve done a good job of telling their own stories up to this point. There are many touching moments of brotherhood and candid emotional testimonies of unimaginable pain. One sequence where two RBSS members watch Isis propaganda footage of their father being shot in the head is a difficult but brilliant crystallisation of the real impact of Isis’s day-to-day control of their territory. A moment where one of the same men sends a message to the still-active Facebook account of his brother, killed only for being related to them, is horrifying.

But the film is about more than simply personal loss and Heineman’s admiration of journalist activists. It’s a guide to the media war being fought between Isis’s video team and RBSS, an arms race that escalates to the extent that Isis order the destruction of Raqqa’s satellite dishes to attempt to starve covert sources’ ability to share news from the city. Those who avoid Isis’s videos might be surprised at the high production values of their recruitment clips, deliberately made to look like big-budget Hollywood productions and video games. RBSS’ calm accounts of how vulnerable young Muslim men across the world are seduced by these tactics are important and chilling.

This is a remarkable documentary that is likely to win Heineman more awards and hopefully RBSS more attention, although, stuck between Assad and Isis, it seems increasingly unlikely that they will have a home city to return to. City of Ghosts is a timely piece that testifies to the historical truth that when a vacuum of power forms, the most cynical will rush in to fill it, but also to the power of journalists. Those who oppose the presence of Syrian refugees in our cities would do well to watch this film and understand a little better. It’s no exaggeration to say that when the histories of 21st-century Syria and citizen journalism are written, this documentary will be a key part of them.