A Director & Producer’s Statement

Why I Need Your Help to Finish The Forgotten Peacekeepers

For six years, I have dedicated my life to directing and producing The Forgotten Peacekeepers, a feature documentary about the 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing, the deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since World War II.

On October 23, 1983, 241 American peacekeepers, mostly Marines, alongside Army and Navy personnel, were killed in their sleep by a suicide bomber while serving a peacekeeping mission meant to prevent further bloodshed during Lebanon’s civil war.

This film took me across borders and battle lines: from Beirut to Bethlehem, Ramallah to Haifa, Jerusalem to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and on to Lille, Paris, and Toulouse, because France, too, lost sons that morning. I sat with survivors, widows, parents, refugees, Marines, and lawyers on every side of this history. In homes, barracks, law offices, and refugee camps, I heard the same truths repeated: unbearable loss, and fragile hopes for peace in places where revenge has burned for generations.

I kept asking why.

Why were these men sent?

Why were they left exposed?

Why has their story faded, despite how deeply it reshaped modern warfare and the Middle East we live with today?

That question is personal.

The Lebanese Civil War was the first war I encountered on television. Every night, I kept hearing about Yasser Arafat, a name impossible to forget. My father, a photographer, traveled through Beirut and the region constantly, returning with photographs and exotic daggers. As a child on holiday in 1972, I sensed complex danger as Israeli jets flew over Cyprus during the Yom Kippur War. These feelings revisited me during the 1982 Munich Olympics.

My mother, Marjorie, was born in 1929 and survived the London Blitz. She grew up under nightly bombing, watched her father pulled alive from rubble, and once woke to an unexploded parachute bomb hanging outside her bedroom window from a Pear tree. Those stories raised me. So did the terrorism of the IRA, and the many bombings of my childhood, in London, and my hometown of Brighton, where the IRA blew up a hotel, almost killing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

War was never abstract in my life. It lived in kitchens and bedrooms, in family stories. That is why I cannot turn away from the parents, spouses, and survivors of Beirut. After six years of listening, I felt compelled to ask questions on their behalf, about the future.

How many parents must bury their children before we rethink the path we’re on?

At some point, the superpowers, billionaires, religious leaders, media institutions, and the elite systems that shape the political dynamics of the world must answer a simple human question:

Can we share land, resources, and technology without sending other people’s children to the front lines and calling it justice or national interest?

This film offers no easy answers. It offers truth, memory, and reflection, so we might stop repeating the same mistakes, which would take a global mindshift in the name of the species' survival.

Why We’re Asking for $325,000

Telling a multi-character war story, honestly, from all sides, is extraordinarily difficult, especially independently. Post-production is the most critical and expensive phase. This is where six years of filming becomes a coherent, truthful, and emotionally powerful film. I need a full professional team to finish it properly.

Your support funds:

Editorial completion with a team of three.

Sound design and final mix

Color correction and finishing

Archival footage licensing

Music licensing and score mixing from live music.

Legal review, deliverables, and festival readiness

Without this final phase, the stories entrusted to me remain unfinished.

I have carried this project for six years because these men deserve more than a footnote. They came as peacekeepers. They were caught in forces far larger than themselves. They should never be forgotten, or the violence in the Middle East that continued after 1983, and is still raging.

If you believe memory matters.

If you believe that listening across divides still has value.

If you believe art can slow us down long enough to reflect.

Please stand with me and help bring The Forgotten Peacekeepers across the finish line.

Thank you for your trust and generosity, and for believing these stories still matter.

With gratitude to all the families, Beirut veterans who trusted me with their sacred stories and memories. Beirut veteran Dave Madaras, whose support has never wavered; to Dan Gaskill, Marine, lawyer, and friend, who helped first ignite this journey; to Caragh Fay, whose lifelong commitment to justice for the fallen is unmatched; to Steve Perlis and Josh Perlis for their legal insight and story contribution; and to the Department of Defense for granting extraordinary access and support, including the recording of the President’s Orchestra for our soundtrack.