Capernaum

classified 15 S
Film

Please note: This was screened in March 2019

Director
Nadine Labaki
Cast
Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole
Details
126 mins, Subtitled, 2018, Lebanon | USA
Primary language
Arabic

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes (and recently nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars®), this heartbreaking and defiant film tells the story of a poverty stricken Lebanese boy who sues his parents for the crime of giving him life.

12 year old Zain lives with his family in Beirut – a city that, for a boy like him, is a place without peace, mercy or order. Deeply angered by his poverty, his parents’ failure to protect him from it, and the desperate compromises they have made to get money, he runs away from home - where he forms an unlikely bond with an Ethiopian migrant and her young toddler. After committing a violent crime he is sentenced to five years in jail, where he confronts his parents about the life they have given him.

Lead by first-time actor Zain Al Rafeea, a Syrian refugee who gives a phenomenal performance (he received a 10 minute standing ovation at the premiere), Capernaum is an arresting look at crushed innocence and the link between poverty and anger.


× Close

Help us make our website work better for you

We use Google Analytics to gather information on how our website is used. This information helps us to make changes to our website that improve the usefulness and overall experience for our visitors. If you would like to help us to make continuous improvements to our website, please allow us to set "first-party" cookies (only readable by us) so that we can distinguish visitors and gain greater insights.

Allow cookies for analytics Deny cookies for analytics