Zain Al Rafea Stars in Capernaum

In the beginning of Capernaum we see Zain being admitted into a junior detention facility after committing a violent crime. Then we see him being taken to court because he’s suing somebody. He’s suing his own parents for the crime of having him! During the trial he tells the story of his journey in the slums of Beirut which ended up with the crime he committed.

Everything we witness with Zain in his journey is realistic dark cinema at its best. The film is a strong shock though it doesn’t tell us something we don’t already know, and I mean “us” as citizens of the Arab world. The ones who come across street children or slums inhabitants regularly. I think this is important because I was worried we became generally numb towards those issues, and the crazy thing is that I don’t think the film is exaggerating on anything. It’s just so real and touchable that it feels like a documentary, and I mean that in a good way. The way its acted, filmed and edited made me feel like I’m offered a first row seat to follow Zain’s life. While the extent of how dark, tragic and heartbreaking it is made me not want to. I’m speaking nightmares! The film offers a particular nightmare that haunted me for a good 5 years of my life, and it was so painful that I used to block it from my mind. Only to find it with its full details in front of me on the screen! I blame the film director Nadine Labaki for my pain! The crazy thing is that I can’t claim she was being too melodramatic to blackmail me into shock and tears. We live in this world and we’re sure it’s happening every single moment though, again, we don’t really want to admit it.

Just like Abou Bakr Shawky did in Yommedine, Nadine Labaki follows the hard path to make everything simple. More like, why would I spend so much time trying to imitate hell? Let’s just go and film there! Most scenes are taking place in their real environment and it minimizes the hassle of production design. Filming depends heavily on handheld cameras and it minimizes the need for careful framing and composition. Though that was reserved for some key scenes and they were breathtaking visually. I don’t believe there were storyboards and scene plans, and that’s because the first cut of the film was 12 hours long. Which took 2 years to be edited into the released 2 hours cut. This is not the norm in feature films guys, we’re more accustomed to this in documentaries. Additionally, the acting cast had some professional actors but stars first timers in the title roles. Zain Al Rafeea who played Zain & Yordanos Shiferaw who played Rahil. They weren’t acting for the most part, they were just reliving a life they have seen and known, and the outcome of using them is amazing. In some films executed in the same way, you appreciate the performances but you always get a sense of amateurism in it. Not in this one, they truly delivered unforgettable performances, filled with moments of complicated expression, especially that dialogue in mostly minimal.

In the filmmaking process, this minimizes technical complications and maximizes artistic challenges. Putting more of the strings in the hands of the filmmaker and the key crew members, and turning his, or her life in this case, into continuous suffering. If Labaki’s suffering can always promise such outcome, then I wish her a life of pain from all my heart.

Capernaum is a great film and a must watch at least once .. or rather exactly once. No really, it will take a top spot in the list of best films I’ve seen and will never watch again. Even the successful attempts of comedy made me feel more sad. That doesn’t take anything from its value of course and I really believe that, if it wasn’t up against Roma this year, it would’ve been the top runner for the Oscar prize.

Two Best Friends and a Road Trip

In his long feature directorial debut, Abou Bakr Shawki, chooses to tell the story of Beshay, a recovered leper who never stepped foot outside the leper colony but decided travel a long distance to find his family after his wife’s death. Beshay is joined by Obama, his young orphan friend and they embark on a road trip filled with adventure, laughs and tears.

The film stars Radi Gamal, a recovered leper in real life and a resident of the leper colony. Of course he’s not a professional actor, neither is Ahmed Abdel Hafez who plays Obama. This adds to the overall risky approach that Shawki followed in making his film which also guarantees him full control by taking more and more strings in his own hands. No big star to dictate his own vision, no hours of daily makeup, and no complications in sets and decoration since the film is mostly shot in real locations and mostly outside. I would say this is an understandable approach for a director with an enthusiastic vision and a large amount of energy to see it through.

The vision is not about people with sickness, poor people or illiterate people, it’s rather about discarded people. The ones we don’t see even though they’re in plain sight all the time. The ones that suffer from everything and struggle with anything. The ones that find peace in believing that they’ll have justice on judgement day, which happens to be the title of the film in Arabic.

Like any other road trip film, our story flows through acts consisting of the places our heroes travel to, the people they encounter and the misfortune, and rarely fortune, that they come across. Our acts are very well paced, with just about the right dosage of pain and humour to balance it. Shawki, who also wrote the screenplay, doesn’t seem to be overly interested in providing a poverty fest. He appears to be aware of when his audience will be about to feel much of anything, and he always has the right solution. A ray of hope always appeared when a lot goes wrong. A splash of kindness always emerged when cruelty becomes too frequent. I was kept engaged and interested through the entirety of the film.

The cast, while inexperienced as actor, are of course experts in playing their characters. This added a unique layer of realism that is not necessarily always effective. The characterization of Beshay is of course unparalleled, not only in the understanding of the character’s struggles but also in the basic tools of portrayal like speech delivery. However, timings are not always perfect and reactions are sometimes lacking.

Beshay’s journey is not by any means more interesting than the journey of Yomeddine from being an unknown film to Egyptian viewers to becoming the most important film of the year, and the official representative of Egypt in the race for the Best Foreign Language Film race at the Academy Awards. It is indeed a huge risk but it delivered a beautiful film and a unique experience for us as viewers as I’m sure it was for the makers of the film.