Lebanon/France/USA – Drama – Year: 2018 – Running time: 126 mins
Languages: Arabic, Amharic
Audience response:
Rating: 
(4.7 from 34 responses)
- ‘Excellent’: 26 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 6 votes
- ‘Good’: 2 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
- + 1 comment left on Facebook
Read the comments here or visit our “Capernaum” discussion page
Synopsis:
Since its premiere at Cannes, this heart-warming film has won prizes and golden opinions, plus a nomination for best foreign film at the Oscars. Implausibly perhaps, a boy, Zain, in jail, sues his parents for giving birth to him. But he’s really infuriated (he’s always angry) by the grotesque indignity and cruelty to which his parents have submitted as result of their poverty. A cry from the heart? More an angry shout!
Nadine Labaki shines a bright light on dark times. A painfully unreal experience.
Jeff Mitchell (Art House Film Wire)
Director: Nadine Labaki
Where Do We Go Now? (2011) / Caramel (2007)
Main cast:
Zain Al Rafeea
Yordanos Shiferaw
Boluwatife Treasure Bankole
Kawsar Al Haddad
Fadi Yousef
Haita ‘Cedra’ Izzam
… Zain
… Rahil
… Yonas
… Souad, the Mother
… Selim, the Father
… Sahar, the Sister
(for full cast and more information, see “Capernaum” in IMDB)
CFC Film Notes
Nadine Labaki’s film Capernaum (meaning chaos, or confusion, in Arabic) opens with a young convict being taken from prison into court; but not to face trial for some heinous crime (that case has already concluded) – instead he is suing his parents for having giving birth to him. If the court room scenes that open and close the film are contrived and implausible, the story that unfolds in between; a story of poverty and deprivation, of street children and illegal immigrants (both of whom lack official documentation and are, therefore, legally non-existent) is, in turns, breath-taking, harrowing, hilarious, tender and brutal.
Very few of the cast are professional actors, but Labaki worked with them, developing the film over six months by incorporating the cast’s own personal experiences into the story, so they are to various extents recreating their own everyday existence. Zain Al Rafeea, an undocumented, uneducated, Syrian refugee (12-years old, but so malnourished, he could easily pass as a skinny 8-year-old) was working as a delivery boy when cast as the lead. Yordanos Shifera, an Eritrean refugee, who plays illegal immigrant, Rahil, was herself detained during filming (some of the prison scenes were shot when she was genuinely under detention), delaying the shoot by several months. CFC members have in the past commented in the reaction slips, about the exceptional performances of the child stars (take Shoplifters and Custody, both shown this season, as examples) – tonight, folks, we present a whole troupe of them!
Since making this film, Al Rafeea and his parents have moved to Norway, where he attends drama school, hoping one day to become a professional actor. No longer undocumented – he now has a Norwegian passport. His infant co-star, Treasure, is now living in Kenya with her parents – whilst in Lebanon, she was non-existent – as the daughter of two migrant workers who, legally, did not have the right to bear children.
Selected UK Reviews:
Sight and Sound (Kate Stables)
Observer (Simran Hans)
Flickering Myth (Tom Beasley)
