Movie Review Capernaum

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Spoiler alerts – 2018 A harrowing movie presented with documentary realism. Made in Lebanon in the Arabic language by Director Nadine Labaki.. The title is drawn from the Biblical city Capernaum, dismissed by Jesus as a place with no hope of salvation when the people there reject his ministry and Messianic status. In the film the word refers to a place in chaos. It features Zain, a young boy who has been imprisoned for stabbing a man. Much of the story is told in flashback as to how and why this happened. Zain has no birth certificate and therefore no idea how old he is (he’s about twelve). He and his sister help the family make money through drug trafficking, but when his sister has her first period, Zain fear that his parents might try selling her into an arranged marriage. They do and when his efforts to save her fail, Zain runs away from home. He gets himself work and home with an illegal immigrant girl from Africa who cleans toilets at a fairground, and helps look after her baby son who he becomes virtually a brother to. When the baby’s mother is caught and arrested as an illegal, Zain struggles to buy and steal enough food to keep himself and the little boy going. He eventually meets a man who promises to take care of the baby (he knows the mother, but may well be going to sell the child) and he claim that can get Zain a false passport but he needs some ID papers Zain has to get from his original home. During an attempt to get the papers, Zain learns that his sister, younger than he is, died in her pregnancy to her new husband, provoking Zain’ s murder attempt on the man. From prison, Zain attempts to sue his appalling parents for ever having him at at all in such a wretched life, provoking a legal and media campaign exposing such widespread practices and putting some hope of recognition and reprieve for hi various imprisoned friends. While it final scenes are optimistic of change the rest of the film is so relentlessly despairing it can get unbearable. There are moments of humour and kindness. Zain has no TV set when minding the baby but amuse him by using a mirror to catch the TV screen of a neighboring house and makes up the dialogue himself. He also meets a confused old man wearing a Spiderman outfit. The man declares himself to be Cockroach Man, cousin to Spiderman, but again the realistic shocks of poverty, desperation and child trafficking dominate the film. This movie closed the Worldwise Learning Centre International Movie Festival, nine movies shown over seven days, chosen from round the World and very thoughtfully set out with a great deal of work. A huge thank you to the organizers at the University Of Central Lancashire (UCLan). Youtube trailer for the movie - . emphasizing the director's use of a cast of unknowns who are mostly refugees themselves including this award winning movie' s young lead performer, Zain Al Rafeea. Arthur Chappell