Capernaum

Movie Information

An all-time great child performance and sustained hope over a lengthy runtime makes Nadine Labaki’s latest a worthy Oscar nominee.
Score:

Genre: Foreign Film/Drama
Director: Nadine Labaki
Starring: Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole
Rated: R

A worthy Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum remarkably sustains hope and investment within bleak circumstances for 2 1/2 hours.

Propelled by a narrative true to its titular synonym for “chaos,” the Lebanese export also features one of cinema’s all-time great child performances — truly! — by wholly naturalistic, real-life Syrian refugee Zain Al Rafeea as a preteen named, well, Zain.

Fed up with his parents’ mishandling of his beloved sister’s future, Zain raises the film’s already high tension when he runs away to Beirut, links up with undocumented Ethiopian refugee Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) and scrapes out a meager and, in turn, breathless existence with her and her young son Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole).

Framed by an intriguing court case pitting Zain — with Labaki as his crusading attorney — against his mother and father, Capernaum keeps viewers guessing in regards to chronology and its characters’ fates and wrings out a wealth of humanity in the process.

Starts Feb. 22 at Grail Moviehouse

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About Edwin Arnaudin
Edwin Arnaudin is a staff writer for Mountain Xpress. He also reviews films for ashevillemovies.com and is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) and North Carolina Film Critics Association (NCFCA).

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