• Capernaum

    “My life is dogshit.” Zain El Hajj, the young protagonist of Nadine Labaki’s third feature Capernaum, which competed for the Foreign Language prize at last week’s Oscars, is not having such a good time of it. Twelve years old with an asterix (as a child to undocumented parents, there’s no birth certificate for confirmation), Zain endures a monotonous, shabby, profoundly unnourishing childhood in Beirut’s dilapidated urban sprawl. Played by Zain Al Rafeea, a Syrian refugee himself, the young lad lives with his large family in a rotting apartment owned by their cousin Assad, in whose shop some of the kids spend…