IN THE SHADOW OF BEIRUT
Genre
Documentary
Running time
92 minutes
Year
2023
Language
Arabic
Country
Ireland and Lebanon
Director
Garry Keane, Stephen Gerard Kelly
Bio
Producer
Brendan J Byrne, Myriam Sassine, Christian Beetz, Iseult Howlett
Cast
Scriptwriter
Refugees have been flowing into Sabra and Shatila, a lawless no-man’s-land on the edge of the Lebanese capital, since 1948; where 30,000 stateless people now live. Over four years, the directors of this sensitive documentary follow four families in desperate circumstances: An eight-year-old boy ransacks rubbish bins to support his family, who were forced to flee Syria; a devoted father battles his own persistent drug habit; a very different father imprisons his teenage daughter for fear of what might happen to her outside and a Romany family gathers around the bed of a child with a painful skin disease, unable to take her to a hospital. Most striking, however, is the power of these desperate people’s love.
This documentary is Ireland's official nomination for the Oscars.
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