After receiving recognition and praise from all over the world, Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum ranked #71 among the Guardian’s list of the 100 Best Films of the 21st Century.
Although it was released a year ago, Capernaum is still grabbing the hearts and proving its outstanding worth wherever it lands.
Here’s the Guardian review of the film:
A sprawling drama that functions both as an excoriating treatise on the nature of poverty in Lebanon, and an idiosyncratic drama in which a child takes his parents to court for their ill-treatment of him.
We tend to think of the latter type of juvenile emancipation as the province of overprivileged westerners, but director Nadine Labaki makes it work in the toughest of social circumstances: a 12-year-old, living in the Beirut slums, takes steps to deal with his parents’ neglect. A highly original and affecting film.
This Lebanese movie portrays the life of young Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), a 12-year-old Lebanese boy, born in a poor family, and who lives in the slums of Beirut.
The storyline focuses on Zain’s tough life and leads to his attempt to sues his parents Souad (Kawsar Al Haddad) and Selim (Fadi Yousef) for the “crime” of giving him life.
Capernaum has already won several prizes, including ‘The Audience Award’ and ‘Best Script’ in the Stockholm Film Festival, ‘Prix Du Jury’ in International Cannes Film Festival, and ‘Meilleur Film Etranger’ in Les Globes De Cristal.
Besides, Capernaum was the first Lebanese film to ever be nominated for a Golden Globe’s Foreign Language category. In addition to that, it was the second Lebanese film to ever be nominated for the Oscars’ Foreign Language category, following Ziad Doueiry’s The Insult.
Not so long ago, Capernaum was remarkably well-received by the Chinese public, becoming, as per Daily Box Office – China, the second top-grossing film internationally of the weekend, right behind only Avengers: Endgame.
It scored over $25 million within its first week of screening and rated 8.7/10 on China’s movie review site Douban.
The Lebanese director Nadine Labaki never fails to impress us!
Recently, Labaki went back to acting as she stars in a new Lebanese film titled 1982, which won recently the Netpac Award at Toronto International Film Festival.
Our warmest wishes of success and good luck for Nadine Labaki, wherever she goes and whatever she does!
