WARSAW.- Representatives from 48 countries will breathe this capital’s Autumnal air during a celebration of the global art of movies, as Warsaw’s 22nd International Film Festival kicked off last Friday.

The event features this year main competitions are New Films, New Directors, and in International, Regional and Feature-Length Documentary, with157 films selected from hundreds of entries and from the programs of the leading film festivals, screened in cinemas across Poland’s capital.

Many of the productions’ world premiere took place just weeks or even days ago, at a just concluded festival in Toronto, and earlier ones in Venice and Lugarno.

One of these, Ghosts of Cité Soleil, is competing in the Documentary category is a first feature-length productdion of the Danish filmmaker Asger Leth. His father Jorgen Leth -a director as well- made films in Haiti since the early 1980s and has lived there since 1991, from 1999 to 2005 as a Danish consul in Jacmel.

The movie focuses on the actual events surrounding the last months of Jean Bertrand Aristide's presidency

The story is about two brothers from Port-au-Prince, living on the edge of life in Cité Soleil, considered one of the world’s poorest, roughest, and most dangerous slums. They are the leaders of the local slum gang whose fellows are known as chimères, or ghosts.

One of them wants to fight for the president, dreaming of one day joining Aristide’s Lavalas party, whereas he other wants to live free, out of the political machinery and brutal reality driven by the notorious violence. Instead of being a part of strong-arm militias, helping to quell the resistance to Aristide, he opts to find his way in music, writing rap lyrics. A French relief worker is the love interest, with whom they both fall for.

Director Asger Leth and his crew had an exceptional chance to reach the heart of that Haitian ghetto and get to know gang culture in the months leading up to Aristide’s forced ouster in February 2004.

Last Tuesday the situation took unexpected turn as heavily armed policemen entered the slum, shaking hands and chatting with inhabitants in a gesture of friendship expected to reduce a hatred of locals against the authorities. Cité Soleil, is currently a stronghold of supporters of president Rene Preval's predecessor which in recent years had become a lawless, no-man’s land for anyone but the gang members, who the government has yet to persuade to lay down their arms.

World famous Haitian-born rapper and reggae singer Wyclef Jean also stars as himself in the movie.