“Socially relevant issues have been at the forefront of my work since my high school days. I believe that it is our duty as filmmakers and storytellers to cast a critical eye at our societies normalization of stereotypes and prejudices, born from archaic traditions and ignorance perpetuated by an inadequate dumbed down educational system, rather than reinforce them as the majority of commercial content does by idolizing and romanticizing the very things that are hindering our collective progress and evolution. It is with this in mind that I have engaged a team of young professionals to embark together on the journey of making and discovering The Outcasts”
Samer Beyhum
Born and raised in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 civil war, Samer Beyhum grew up in a unique and diverse environment that was in spite of the sectarian segregation and archaic patriarchal hegemony of the time. A founding member of the environmental movement in post-civil-war Lebanon, and an advocate for peace and social justice from a very young age, Samer represented Lebanon at the UN-organized Global Youth forum in 1997 heald in Seoul, South Korea.
Samer studied filmmaking and theater at the Lebanese American Univerity in Beirut where he joined his love for music, his experience as a ballet dancer, and his sense of social justice in order to create expressive projects and develop his style.
After graduating from university, Samer devolved himself as a multidisciplinary filmmaker, director, editor, sound engineer, post-production specialist, and technician with an interest in developing pedagogy methods and socially relevant content. He subsequently moved to Canada in 2007 and helped co-found 99Media.org, an independent media group for social justice in Montreal back in 2011. Samer produced multiple short documentaries and two feature documentaries in collaboration with different members of 99Media.org, including the “Derives” (2012), award-wining “La Chartes des Distractions” (2014), and the award-winning “Une Histoire Syrienne” (2014).
He moved back to Lebanon in 2016 and established a program at the Lebanese American University of Beirut to engage students and alumni to create socially relevant films and documentaries in a highly professional manner in order to lay open Lebanese society’s untold stories. From this collaboration, several short documentaries and films were produced which include the award-winning short documentary “Maram” (2017), the award-winning experimental film “The Spiral” (2018), and the award-winning short narrative film “Abandoned” (2019).