Face 2 Face With David Peck

Elizabeth Mirzaei and David Peck talk about her new film Laila At The Bridge, opium production in Afghanistan, freedom and oppression, bravery, corruption and persistence, corruption, systemic misogyny and the love of a Mother.  Synopsis In a country offering almost no treatment services despite a crisis of addiction, Laila Haidari took the highly unusual decision to found her own pioneering addiction treatment center and a restaurant where all of the waiters are recovering heroin addicts. Her brother Hakim, a solidly recovered addict, runs her free treatment center, which offers services for both men and women. As a former child bride she has known hardship in her 40 years. And she revisits that misery regularly as she mingles with drug-addicts, huddled under a Kabul bridge. She encounters corpses. And she meets the near-dead, malnourished and sick who she tries to convince to accompany her to Mother Camp. “When I listen to their pain, I forget my own,” says Laila, who has struggled to provide sanctuary for