Film

As the Beast Sleeps

Director

Harry Bradbeer

Year

2002

When the political leadership of the Ulster Defence Association bans paramilitary activity, the teams groomed for fighting face a drastic change in lifestyle.

Kyle is loyal to his wife, his best mate and his boss in the Ulster Defence Union – and they love him as a husband, a brother and a son – but, with changing times and the emerging peace process, Kyle finds himself lost in the shadows of transition, uncertainty, and betrayal. In a world turned upside down, peace and brutality walk side-by-side, while love and loyalty are sacrificed to the new order. "As the Beast Sleeps" is set in Belfast's Protestant Rathcoole housing estate and explores with an up-to-the-minute urgency, the fragmentation within an extended family of loyalists in the context of the current cease-fire.