Episode 684: In The Seats With...Garry Keane, Stephen Gerard Kelly and 'In The Shadow of Beirut'

In The Seats with...

Hope finds a way to keep going....
On this very special episode we dive into the powerful new documentary which is available on VOD platforms now; In The Shadow of Beirut.
In Sabra, one of Beirut’s toughest urban slums, sectarianism and violence is a permanent way of life. Rabia, a 38-year-old hardworking but undocumented 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, labors hard to feed his family while forging an unlikely friendship with a civil war veteran and fruit stall owner. In the Shadow of Beirut weaves these four compelling storylines together in a searing portrait of a people and a city struggling to survive amidst some of the most difficult living conditions imaginable. In this failing state, it is the vulnerable who suffer the most.
This is an undeniably poignant piece of cinema that allows audiences to see a glimmer of hope and humanity in a place where no one would blame us for thinking that those ideals had been abandoned long ago.
We had the pleasure of talking with filmmakers Garry Keane and Stephen Gerard Kelly about the challenges of making a film like 'In The Shadow of Beirut' and so very much more.