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Behind the Shield

Sirine Fattouh

Behind the Shield is a reflective and immersive documentary that explores the complex socio-political landscape of Lebanon through the lens of a dash camera installed in the artist’s car. Capturing footage from 2018 to 2020, the film documents two tumultuous years in Beirut’s history: the beginning of the October 2019 protests, the eerie emptiness of the streets during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and the night of the devastating Beirut port explosion on August 4, 2020. Using the dash cam as a silent, mechanical observer, the film offers a unique perspective on the unfolding of daily life, societal unrest, and catastrophic events. The fixed frame of the camera imposes a physical and emotional distance, yet the captured sounds—from the radio broadcasts to intimate conversations within the car—create a contrasting sense of immediacy. This juxtaposition between distance and intimacy invites the audience to reflect on the layered realities of a city in perpetual transformation. Rather than focusing on sensationalized depictions, Behind the Shield seeks to capture the peripheral, the overlooked, and the fragmented. Through its chronological structure, the film provides a raw yet nuanced narrative, progressing from the hope and resilience of the protests to the sheer devastation and aftermath of the explosion. By transforming a tool of surveillance into an instrument of documentation and memory, the artist not only archives the city’s visible scars but also its unseen, emotional wounds. Behind the Shield is an act of witnessing that challenges the audience to engage critically with the images and sounds of a city grappling with its history and enduring the weight of its unresolved tragedies.
Country: Beirut
Time: 58
Year: 2022