BEYOND BELIEF
Featured on circlesoflight.com

Beyond Belief, a documentary film by Beth Murphy is truly beyond belief.

This independent film documents the story of two 9/11 widows who decide to truly make a difference in the world and shows that something good can come from tragedy.

This is a must-see DVD. The contents are suitable for everyone. The film stirs the emotions and is sad, joyful, thought provoking, and much more.

Beyond Belief tells the story of Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, two moms living happily in Boston with their husbands and children, both expecting another child, when both of their husbands are killed in the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11/2001. Having never met before, they form a deep bond born of grief and common circumstances.

Susan Retik and Patti Quuigley PicWhile many having suffered such terrible, horrific losses would become bitter, these unique, astounding mothers begin to look at the country where the terrorists who killed their spouses and so many others trained. Afghanistan, they learned, is home to many thousands of widows due to war and these women had nothing to do with the terrorism. They simply want to live their lives and raise their children. However, their culture does not look kindly on widows nor does it provide financial or emotional support as you will find common in the United States.

The two mothers featured in Beyond Belief realize the women in Afghanistan need their help. Being blessed with so much, they decided to raise money by biking from Ground Zero to Boston, a trip of 250 miles, in hope of raising thousands of dollars to somehow help the widows half way around the world.

The old adage of “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever” is similar to the solution the Beyond Belief women chose to follow. By supplying the equipment necessary, the skills, and baby chicks, they were able to help 400 widows become small entrepreneurs who raised and sold chickens and eggs while using some of their production to better feed their own families. This enabled these Afghani widows, often living with large families including parents and in-laws in a single small room, to earn enough to improve their lives and send their children to school.

Beyond Belief doesn’t end there, however.

These two American women who have been through so much decide they should visit the women they are helping in Afghanistan. While planning their trip, one of their main C.A.R.E. International contacts in Afghanistan, a young woman working to help the poor, is kidnapped and held captive for months before her release. This really gives the Americans pause to think of what can happen to them in a war-torn foreign land which holds such unfamiliar and strict ideas about women and how they may appear and act in public.

The cinematography in Beyond Belief is magical and the music is moving, including Five for Fighting’s Superman and the main score by Evren Celimli. The scenes of Afghanistan, photographed by Kevin Belli and Sean Flynn, tell a real story of what life in that land is like for those living in such complete abject poverty. The emotional spectrum ranges from tear-jerking to scenes that will make your heart soar.

I highly recommend Beyond Belief by Beth Murphy to anyone, especially those touched by any form of tragedy and the potential for transformation.

This film was an Official Selection for the Tribeca Film Festival. It is published by Principle Pictures. Don’t miss this highly acclaimed DVD. It is one you will watch more than once, learning a great deal about love and forgiveness with each viewing.

BEYOND BELIEF
Featured in Video Librarian, November/December 2008
By F. Swietek
Rated: 3 out of 4 Stars - Recommended

Although right-wing author Ann Coulter (whose snide comments about the widows of 9/11 victims made national news) might not appreciate BEYOND BELIEF, most viewers will find this documentary—showcasing efforts by two 9/11 widows to raise funds in order to assist Afghan widows—to be quite moving. Boston-area mothers Patti Quigley and Susan Retik’s husbands were passengers in the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center towers. After a period of grieving, the pair decided to channel their emotions into helping others while also trying to build stronger ties with the Afghan people. Filmmaker Beth Murphy’s documentary is structured somewhat like a three-act play: the first sets the stage through interviews and day-to-day footage of both the Quigley and Retik families at home, the second details their fundraising bike ride from Ground Zero to Boston, and the last records their 2006 journey to Afghanistan, where they met and bonded with women who benefited from their activism and financial contributions. A side-story also covers the abduction of an Italian aid worker the pair knew (fortunately, she was ultimately released by her captors unharmed). Simply told, this genuinely inspiring film certainly touches on the subject of forgiveness, but that isn’t the primary theme: instead, BEYOND BELIEF offers a starkly powerful reminder of the good that can be accomplished by ordinary people who set aside anger and devote themselves to improving the lives of others—and, in the process, end up enriching their own. Recommended. Aud; C, P.

BEYOND BELIEF
Featured on Curled Up with a Good DVD
By Lucinda Tart
Rated: 4 1/2 out of 5 Stars!

This documentary is timely in a United States that is suffering from numerous wounds to our collective psyche. From our economic scare to our loss of life in the Iraq war, Americans are against the wall and don’t know where to turn. Two women, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, found a place to turn away from that wall and heal after discovering they had a bond, a terrible one: both their husbands lost their lives in the terrorist planes that were used as weapons on the now-infamous 9/11. Watching events unfold through the media coverage for the next several months after the terrorist events, they discovered that it was not only the widows here in America who were suffering from the unexpected and devastating loss of their husbands, but also the women in Afghanistan.

Although this was the very country held responsible for hiding the terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, Susan and Patti realized that these women weren’t suffering any less than they were. In fact, they believed that these women may be more traumatized than they and the other widows here in America were. Together they decided to use their grief for good, to turn the power of pain into the power of compassion. Turning their backs on blame and hate, two emotions so common after 9/11, Susan and Patti instead focused on reaching out to the widows, whose husbands lived among and may have practiced the beliefs of the Taliban, to help them rebuild their lives.

A heartwarming tribute to the memory of the Americans who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, BEYOND BELIEF is a real-life story of how to turn grief and anger into positive action. Susan and Patti never forget their own wounds but worked through the pain by helping others whose pain was worse than their own. Both of them reached far beyond their own grief by acknowledging that without 9/11, the world would never have known the extent of the suffering women in Afghanistan. BEYOND BELIEF, winner of numerous independent film festival awards, is filled with joy and tears. Adults and mature teenagers alike will be touched and learn compassion in watching this documentary.

BEYOND BELIEF
Featured on Exclaim!
By Robert Bell

Ever since the events of September 11th happened, liberal-minded artistes and gun-toting right-wing nut-bars have been barking their belief systems up, down and around the controversial series of subsequent events while everyone else does their best to move on. It’s something that most have developed a personal framework for that doesn’t require additional ruminations and heavy-handed pandering, which is likely why most artistic commercial ventures surrounding the subject have failed. Beth Murphy’s documentary about Susan Retik and Patti Quigley deals with this issue at addendum, following them from their charity bicycle ride from New York to Boston, as a means to raise money for Afghan widows, to their visit in Afghanistan where they try to figure out how to disperse the funds. All of this is given gravity by the fact that both American women lost their husbands during the 9/11 attacks. An in-depth exploration as to why they chose this particular mode of coping might have been interesting but, while that notion is touched upon briefly, the documentary finds more comfort and safety in painting the women as strong, brave and noble souls who want to cure the plight of terrorism with heart. There is a great deal of crying, overlapping audio tracks and slow pans through once happy (but now empty) suburban homes. While Beth Murphy seems to understand that her subjects are fairly inarticulate and slightly deluded about their motivations, she understandably veers off the path of exploratory family interviews and asks difficult questions to reveal it. While giving a broader picture of the subjects at hand would have made for a more thought-provoking documentary, it would have been tacky and inappropriate given that the subjects are grieving widows who are doing something of value. The DVD includes an interview with Beth Murphy where she delivers prosaic responses to perfunctory questions.