Yahoo Movies Better World Fund Prize Winner Daizy Gedeon Highlights Kleptocracy in Lebanon Documentary ‘Enough’
Australian-Lebanese journalist and filmmaker Daizy Gedeon is en route to Cannes where she will receive a prize Monday night at the Better World Fund gala. Her latest film, “Enough — Lebanon’s Darkest Hour,” is an expose of how the country has fallen into chaos.
The darkest hour that she refers to is neither the 2020 port explosion, nor the bizarre flight of fugitive auto industry executive Carlos Ghosn. Rather it is the country’s descent over the past several years into a state of turmoil caused by the state’s capture by selfish elites.
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“Before the explosion, the country was already cowering under the weight of decades of civil conflict, unrelenting regional turmoil but mostly from endemic, systemic corruption and pure greed,” says Gedeon. “Lebanon has become an allegory for kleptocratic regimes that have seen a resurgence across the globe, and their catastrophic impact.”
Gedeon has been based in Australia since 1987 and manages media company GDR. She has also worked as a London-based reporter, frequently covering Lebanon and the Middle East for the U.K.’s Times newspaper and Channel 4 News.
“Enough” is recently completed and has yet to secure a sales agent. But it will screen in the Cannes Market on Tuesday at a session organized by French executive Bruno Chatelin.
The film leans on interviews with a whistle-blower, the former director general of the Ministry of Finance, Alain Bifani, and academic and Middle East expert Thanassis Cambanis. They describe how under-the-table, self-serving deals have permitted the country’s leaders and their families to remain in power for decades and to accumulate astonishing wealth.
It was shot over four years and across four continents. It covers the 2019 October Revolution and the global social justice movement that was triggered in 2019 by the millions-strong Lebanese diaspora who rallied to support their families and friends back home.
The film includes capture exclusive and controversial interviews with many of the key political leaders of the past four years, including prime minister Saad Hariri, former foreign minister Gebran Bassil, Dr. Samir Geagea, Hezbollah minister Mohammad Fneich, former justice minister Salim Jreissati and governor of the Central Bank, Riad Salame.
“These are the very men responsible for much of Lebanon’s desecration,” Gedeon told Variety, speaking from Sydney airport as she boarded a plane for Cannes.
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