




Directed, produced, and filmed by Academy Award–nominated and Emmy–winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman, City of Ghosts is a singularly powerful cinematic experience that is sure to shake audiences to their core as it elevates the canon of one of the most talented documentary filmmakers working today. Captivating in its immediacy, City of Ghosts follows the journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” – a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014. With astonishing, deeply personal access, this is the story of a brave group of citizen journalists as they face the realities of life undercover, on the run, and in exile, risking their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
To learn more about Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), click here:www.raqqa-sl.com/en/
He described a dream: a golden condor falling from a sky made of mirrors. Each mirror showed a different colony. In one, children forgot their mother tongue. In another, a priest burned quipus while smiling. In the last mirror, the consul saw his own face—young, eager, holding a sword he had never unsheathed.
“I have ordered no torture,” he wrote. “Yet the screams reach me from fifty years ago.”
The consul’s handwriting changed on page forty-four. Up to then, the diary had been precise—dates, distances, the weight of tributes carried on mule-back through the Andean passes. But page forty-four began with a stain: wine or resin, dark as dried blood.
It seems you’re referencing a specific phrase: — which translates to “An Imperial Pain Book PDF 44.”
Since this doesn’t correspond to a known published work (it may be a mistranslation, a code, or a fragment from a literary project), I’ve written an original short story inspired by the mood and mystery of that title. Page 44 of an imaginary book
“Today,” he wrote, “the pain began not in my body but in the empire itself.”
The next page was blank. And the one after that. Rumors say the consul abandoned his post three days later, walked into the jungle with no supplies, and was never found. Only the diary remained—open to page forty-four—on a stone altar where no temple had ever stood.
At the bottom, a single sentence in smaller script: “The empire does not feel pain. It inflicts it. But I am not the empire. I am just its hand—and the hand is rotting.”
The rest of page forty-four was a list of names. Indigenous names. Slave names. Names of rivers rerouted for silver mines. Each name crossed out, then underlined, then crossed again.
7/7/17 – NEW YORK, NY
7/14/17 – Berkeley, CA
7/14/17 – Hollywood, CA
7/14/17 – LOS ANGELES, CA
7/14/17 – SAN FRANCISCO, CA
7/14/17 – WASHINGTON, DC
7/21/17 – CHICAGO, IL
7/21/17 – DENVER, CO
7/21/17 – Encino, CA
7/21/17 – Evanston, IL
7/21/17 – Irvine, CA
7/21/17 – LOS ANGELES, CA
7/21/17 – ORANGE COUNTY, CA
7/21/17 – Pasadena, CA
7/21/17 – PHILADELPHA, PA
7/21/17 – SEATTLE, WA
7/28/17 – ALBANY, NY
7/28/17 – ALBUQUERQUE, NM
7/28/17 – AUSTIN, TX
7/28/17 – CLEVELAND, OH
7/28/17 – DALLAS, TX
7/28/17 – Edina, MN
7/28/17 – INDIANAPOLIS, IN
7/28/17 – Kansas City, MO
7/28/17 – LONG BEACH, CA
7/28/17 – MINNEAPOLIS, MN
7/28/17 – NASHVILLE, TN
7/28/17 – PHOENIX, AZ
7/28/17 – Portland, OR
7/28/17 – Salt Lake City, UT
7/28/17 – Santa Rosa, CA
7/28/17 – Scottsdale, AZ
7/28/17 – Waterville, ME
8/4/17 – Charlotte, NC
8/4/17 – Knoxville, TN
8/4/17 – Louisville, KY
8/18/17 – BURLINGTON, VT
8/18/17 – St. Johnsbury, VT
8/25/17 – Lincoln, NE

Sundance Film Festival 2017
CPH:DOX 2017
DOCVILLE International Documentary Film Festival 2017
Dallas Film Festival 2017
Sarasota Film Festival 2017
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2017
San Francisco International Film Festival 2017
Tribeca Film Festival 2017
Hot Docs 2017
Independent Film Festival Boston 2017
Montclair Film Festival 2017
Seattle International Film Festival 2017
Telluride Mountainfilm 2017
Berkshire International Film Festival 2017
Greenwich Film Festival 2017
Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017
Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2017
AFIDOCS 2017
Nantucket Film Festival 2017
Frontline Club 2017
He described a dream: a golden condor falling from a sky made of mirrors. Each mirror showed a different colony. In one, children forgot their mother tongue. In another, a priest burned quipus while smiling. In the last mirror, the consul saw his own face—young, eager, holding a sword he had never unsheathed.
“I have ordered no torture,” he wrote. “Yet the screams reach me from fifty years ago.”
The consul’s handwriting changed on page forty-four. Up to then, the diary had been precise—dates, distances, the weight of tributes carried on mule-back through the Andean passes. But page forty-four began with a stain: wine or resin, dark as dried blood.
It seems you’re referencing a specific phrase: — which translates to “An Imperial Pain Book PDF 44.”
Since this doesn’t correspond to a known published work (it may be a mistranslation, a code, or a fragment from a literary project), I’ve written an original short story inspired by the mood and mystery of that title. Page 44 of an imaginary book
“Today,” he wrote, “the pain began not in my body but in the empire itself.”
The next page was blank. And the one after that. Rumors say the consul abandoned his post three days later, walked into the jungle with no supplies, and was never found. Only the diary remained—open to page forty-four—on a stone altar where no temple had ever stood.
At the bottom, a single sentence in smaller script: “The empire does not feel pain. It inflicts it. But I am not the empire. I am just its hand—and the hand is rotting.”
The rest of page forty-four was a list of names. Indigenous names. Slave names. Names of rivers rerouted for silver mines. Each name crossed out, then underlined, then crossed again.





