After working on the Sundance Film Festival selection Gaza, director Garry Keane teamed with Stephen Gerard Kelly to turn their eye to another troubled place in the world with In the Shadow of Beirut. An acclaimed documentary that weaves together four stories from the beautiful city going through turmoil as it is on the brink of financial collapse, the film will get a release digitally Tuesday, January 14 from Grasshopper Film. Ahead of the release, we’re pleased to exclusively present the new trailer.
Here are details on the four journies captured in the film: In Sabra, one of Beirut’s toughest urban slums, sectarianism and violence is a permanent way of life. Rabia, a 38-year-old hardworking Lebanese mother cannot afford to admit her chronically ill daughter to hospital, leaving the life of her innocent child hanging in the balance. Father of five Ayman is preparing the way for his daughter Sanaa’s engagement to a local man as his way of protecting her in the neighborhood as he labors to provide the most basic essentials for his family to survive. Young father Aboodi is struggling to kick his drug habit which has brought him to prison before as he battles to find a new path in life that will make him a better parent to his toddler son. In nearby Shatila, Abu Ahmad, an 8-year-old, angelic-looking but mischievous Syrian boy who fled ISIS, labours hard to feed his family while forging an unlikely friendship with a civil war veteran and fruit stall owner.”
“In the Shadow of Beirut – like Gaza – is not overtly political, in that it does not pursue or espouse any one individual political belief. However, through an examination of the film’s lead characters and their lives, it is clear there is a strong underlying political statement being made, that Lebanon has suffered a failure of political leadership since the end of the civil war in 1990,” said the directors. “These same warlords masquerading as politicians and their inner circles perpetuate patriarchal structures of dominance over all sections of Lebanon’s socio-economic fabric. That even they are pawns pitted against one another as the US continues to expand its business interests and prioritize lining pockets of the few over a responsibility to protect all children, not just your own.”
See the exclusive trailer below.