You are here: Home | Resources | Articles | Interview with Asger Leth, Director of The Ghosts of Cité Soleil

Interview with Asger Leth, Director of The Ghosts of Cité Soleil

Other articles in "Articles"

by Kerry McLeod
This week, among the Harry Potter mania, a remarkable documentary is released in selected cinemas. Containing all the drama, tension and sweeping action sequences that you would expect from a big-budget Hollywood movie, The Ghosts of Cité Soleil is all the more shocking because it’s real. Set in the slums of Haiti’s capital Port au Prince, the film is an intimate tale of two brothers, gang leaders and rivals, told on an epic scale during the lead up to, and aftermath of, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s departure in 2004. The plot and themes are that of a Shakespearean tragedy and at times it’s hard to believe that we are really watching events as they unfold.

Below are highlights from an interview DFG’s Kerry McLeod conducted with the film’s director Asger Leth. The rest of the interview will be in the next issue of movieScope magazine (for details see the bottom of the article).

How did the film come about?

I was looking to do a feature film in Haiti that I’d been working on for quite a while… I wanted to shoot a narrative feature that I wanted to shoot documentary-style, with that kind of attitude.

For that kind of story to happen you need strong characters, who have hopes and dreams, and whose back is against the wall. And so I knew that I had to look in [the slums of Port au Prince] to find them. And then I heard about Lele [a French relief worker who also appears in the film], and I heard about a young Serbian guy, whose name was Milos Loncarevic [the film’s co-director and cinematographer]; those two guys were in the slum, hanging out there all the time and were friends with the gang leaders and had access. So I contacted them and through them I got in contact with 2pac and Bily who were perfect, because they were so different; brothers, gang leaders but so different. The moment I met them, they instantly wanted to do the film; they wanted to tell the story.

When all the pieces fell into place I didn’t have time to apply for money or anything like you usually do – make deals with TV stations or anything like that – I just had to basically ask people I knew for help, getting gear, film stock and then I maxed out my credit card and took loans.

The film has such an incredible feature narrative. How did you go about structuring it, both as you were shooting and then in the edit?

We shot constantly for about six months but halfway through I went back to Denmark with the footage I had, and Milos kept shooting, and I found these editors whose work I really liked, and asked them… out of the material I had and the storyline I had, to edit together a trailer. So I actually did a trailer for the film while we were still shooting, because I wanted to see if I was right, that this kind of language could carry through. And I wanted them to cut the trailer like they were cutting a trailer for a narrative feature. So they did that and it worked. In a way, the trailer is a shorter form of a feature film, so I had the idea that if I could find the language of the film, cutting style, look, the sound, which was also very important to get this feature film feeling. If I could get all that stuff going… here’s your main characters, here’s the opposition, here’s where these guys want to go, here’s what’s against them, if you could feel all that stuff then I knew I had something. So I did that, and in doing that process, I realised what material I needed further in the film, what were the weaknesses and what were the strengths.

So I went back with that knowledge, and that trailer in my pocket, to Haiti, and finished the film. And then it was easy – I had 500 hours of material when I went back, and we already knew the language, the expression of the film – sound, style, everything, and so we could cut it, we didn’t have to look for the language, we already had that. So at this point it was just a matter of transcribing 500 hours of material - well it’s not just, it’s a big, big job! – and structuring that according to the synopsis. You know, three-act structure, everything was on the wall. I nailed a big, 10-foot long thing, with three acts, plot reversals, everything.
I didn’t think the story could get any more intense, and then the love triangle emerged. Did that happen after you’d started filming?

Yes, that’s the only thing I didn’t write down on the first day and that’s a major presence in the film of course! I knew there was going to be rivalries between these guys because they’re so different, I knew there was going to be friction between brothers, and also I had the feeling that once the president and the external pressure was going to disappear, that dogs would be dogs and they’d start eating each other. That kind of stuff I was pretty aware of but this love triangle on top of everything… I mean I could feel the flirtation beginning but I had no idea it would come to this, it was a big surprise.

And I didn’t really know it was going to be a part of the film – that was only in the editing process. I had the choice to cut it out or keep it in, but I thought it made the film stronger.

What was it like working with a co-director? How did the relationship work?

Milos is a young guy who grew up in Belgrade during the war. He was my access point to these guys; he knew them so well… He had an independent unit because he had to be in there non-stop to get them to forget the camera, so he had a lot of autonomy and that’s why he got the credit. He’s very talented and very courageous and the film would never have happened without him.

You said you went out there with credit cards and a loan, and I wanted to ask how you then went about getting finance and selling the film on?

At the same time as I cut the trailer halfway through, I showed that to a Danish production company, Nordisk Film... They don’t really do a lot of documentaries, but they’ve just set up this new documentary department that a very, very good producer whose name is Michael Chr. Rieks, was starting up, and they were looking for projects that fit their profile, and I knew him and so I went to him and they were immediately: ‘yeah, let’s do it’. So they jumped on board, and they put some money from their own pocket and then they contacted Danish television (TV2) to give a little bit more money, and then we applied for money form the Danish Film Institute. [They] first rejected me and said that they didn’t want another news reportage from one of the world’s boiling points, and I sent the worst letter I’ve ever wrote to anybody back to [them], I told them they were shitheads… I have so much respect for the fact that they actually looked at that letter and said, he might be right, let’s look at it again. Usually people just close the door and never want to talk to you again with that kind of letter and for the commissioning editor at the Danish Film Institute, I think that was extremely courageous of her and open-minded, and she did that, and she saw that it was a different kind of film and so they went on board with money. And then I contacted Wyclef Jean and showed him the stuff, and wanted him to be in the film, and then also he was so crazy about it, he was like ‘yeah, I’d love to do the music, and if you need any more money, I’d love to be a part of that too.’ So he also put in money in the film.

The scene with Wyclef Jean on the phone is a pretty strong scene. How did you get in contact with him?

2pac was trying desperately to find him, because Wyclef is a hero beyond – he’s not a celebrity in Haiti, he’s the only symbol of hope that you can make it out and make it big somewhere in the world, he’s like the only guy who did it. He was born right next to Cite Soleil. 2pac was convinced that if he could just get hold of Wyclef then his life would change, but I couldn’t connect him with Wyclef, because I can’t interfere with the story. When you’re working with reality you have to realise that reality has to be your only strength. You can’t start fucking with that, you’re fucking yourself somehow, so I couldn’t interfere. But 2pac was recording some music in some really little shithole studio in Port au Prince and he met another Haitian-American who was down there recording something, who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Wyclef. He got in contact with Wyclef and then I could contact Wyclef after that because I felt the door was open. That’s how we did it.

That’s a really interesting point that you raise, about not being able to interfere. Working in a situation like that, that must have been quite difficult.

Ah yeah, I was like biting my lip, trying to hold back and keep a distance and not interfere. And it’s very important for me to say that I’m not doing it for any kind of misguided puritan ideas. I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. I’m not a journalist, I’m not trying to do something journalistic, balanced or objective, I think that’s all bullshit. I’m a filmmaker and I’m a storyteller, I don’t have any ethical problems. I have a problem with destroying my own strength, and when you’re doing a documentary, even though you want it to have a feature film drive, if you’re doing a documentary, it’s real and that has to be your strength. So you’re making yourself impotent if you’re interfering.

For me, watching the film, that seemed obvious, but I’ve seen that other people have launched into debating the politics behind it, rather than dealing with the film itself.

I care about the politics, I’m very interested, but I’m not political filmmaker in that sense. Of course it’s political in many ways, but I’m not this kind of ‘I want to convince people about this, that and the other politically’, I think people should make their own choices. I wanted to make a film that’s a human drama, and of course it’s a human drama that’s set in a very, very political backdrop, but I wanted to get a sense of truth, I wanted to shoot the film at eyeheight, I wanted to be with the gang leaders and feel the politic life as they felt it. So I don’t want to convince anybody at all – I want the audience to judge for themselves. And it’s the same thing with the gangs. I get complaints that it’s sympathising with them too much. I’m not at all sympathising with them, but people, just because I’m not taking a stand against them, think that I’m sympathising with them; that’s not the case at all. This is cinema verite and I want people to make up their own minds. I think the moral judgements are not up to me. But I can tell you in this interview that I am totally opposed to anything these gangs do morally. I think they’re morally reprehensible and disgusting, and they’re killers. But the point is, when you keep looking at these gangs with that moral already on your sleeve, and not wanting to face up to the fact that they’re human beings also, then you have a problem. Like in Haiti right now, everybody wants to kill them and that’s the usual approach. It’s like 2pac says, ‘killing, killing, killing, when is it ever going to stop?’ And he’s right. Because these guys, they’re not the disease, they’re a symptom of the disease and you can try and cure that symptom but you’re not curing that disease. But part of the mission of the film is to make you see that they are human beings, because only then can we actually start thinking oh, maybe we have to not just kill these guys but actually fix the disease, which is how can there be a slum so horrible in a country like this? How can you let that happen? A place with nothing, no hope, no food, no water, no electricity, no sanitation, no nothing. And how dare you use the gangs as political weapons? I think that’s absurd. But you have to show the humanity of it, and that’s what I do, but that doesn’t mean I sympathise.

The rest of this interview will be available in the next edition of movieScope magazine. For details of how to subscribe, click here: www.moviescopemag.com.
And remember, DFG Members get a 40% discount on subscriptions! Login to the DFG Community to find out how.

Back to Articles