Blind Fight

Brian Keenan, from Belfast, was in Beirut teaching English in 1986 when he was taken hostage by the Islamic Jihad. Blind Flight tells the story of his imprisonment. After his abduction, Keenan (played by Ian Hart) is held alone in a tiny, dark cell for a long time. He’s ordered to cover his eyes whenever his captors enter the room. Eventually, he is moved to a new location, where he has a cellmate, British journalist John McCarthy (played by Linus Roache), who had filed a story on Keenan’s abduction just before being kidnapped himself.

The two warm to each other gradually and have different approaches to surviving their shared ordeal. Their captors show occasional glimmers of kindness, but more often, the two men face cruelty and deprivation, heightened by the fact that they have no idea if they will ever be released.

Blind Flight was directed by John Furse, from a script by Furse and Keenan, based on Keenan and McCarthy’s published memoirs. It is a superbly acted and intelligent drama of incarceration. The subject matter is almost painfully topical, a must see. The film had its U.S. premiere at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival to rave reviews.