City of Ghosts

City of Ghosts (2017) is the documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Matthew Heineman tracks a handful of Syrians who called themselves "Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently" — a teacher, a student, ordinary men who picked up phones instead of rifles after ISIS militants seized their hometown.

They film executions in the squares and post what the fighters work hardest to hide, and for that they land on kill lists. The militants hunt the activists and their relatives even after they flee, in Turkey and Germany, and the camera doesn't look away when the reprisals come. Heineman shoots close and skips the voice-of-God narration: exhaustion, sleepless nights and survivor's guilt sit plainly on their faces. The film took the audience award at Sundance and made the Oscar documentary shortlist. It's hard to sit through — but that's the cost of words that turned out to be stronger than guns. Stream City of Ghosts (2017) online on iFILM.