{"id":8278,"date":"2019-02-17T12:02:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T02:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/?p=8278"},"modified":"2019-02-17T10:05:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T00:05:01","slug":"capharnaum-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/capharnaum-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Capharnaum – movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A deeply distressing reality piece, Capharnaum pulls at the heart strings. The title translates to chaos and that’s what this film is about \u2013 surviving amid chaos.<\/p>\n

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\nZain (Zain Al Raffa) is a mistreated 12-year-old Lebanese boy. After being jailed for committing a violent crime, Zain sues his parents \u2013 mother Souad (Kawthar Al Bankole) and father Selim (Fadi Kamel Youssef) \u2013 for giving him life. He’s part of a large family that lives hand-to-mouth in a cramped, crumbling apartment. The kids work instead of going to school because their parents can\u2019t afford to give them a formal education. Zain is very close to his 11-year-old sister, Sahar (Haita Izam). But when, out of desperation, Sahar is sold into marriage, Zain flees his troubled family in the hope of finding a better life.<\/p>\n

An illegal Ethiopian worker, Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), takes pity on Zain while he’s begging in the streets. She takes him with her to her shanty house where she lives with her baby, Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole), and cares for Zain in a way his parents never did. But Zain is suddenly left as the baby\u2019s sole caregiver when Rahil disappears. He’s forced to resort to increasingly desperate measures for both to survive.<\/p>\n

Lebanese-born director Nadine Labaki (Where Do We Go Now?) cast non-professional actors with backgrounds similar to their characters. Zain Al Raffa\u2019s real life is, in several respects, like that of his character. The same goes for Yordanos Shiferaw, a person without papers. Documents authenticate legitimacy; and without them, in a legal sense, people don\u2019t exist. Labaki was inspired to create Zain\u2019s mother by a woman she met who lived in the same conditions as those presented in the film and had 16 children. Six of them had died, while others were in orphanages because she couldn\u2019t care for them.<\/p>\n