Capernaum

PUTTING An ENTIRE film on the shoulders of a small child is always an immense gamble. It’s one that really paid off in nadine Labaki’s Capernaum, the story of a young boy living in the slums of Beirut, who tries to sue his parents for bringing him into a world that offered him no shot at a good life. Labaki tells us how she created her Oscar-winning hit and how she drew one of the performances of the year from a child with no experience.

FROM A TO ZAIN

Labaki used largely non-professional actors in her film and shot chronologically to give them the chance to develop with the characters. Her 12-year-old lead, Zain Al Rafeea, was discovered in the slums where the film is set. “The first scene is the doctor examining him to figure out his age,” says Labaki. “Working with non-professional actors, you don’t know if the film will come to life aωs you imagine it... Working with Zain, the first day was a revelation that it was going to work. He was good immediately. So charismatic. He’s magic.”

HIS DAY IN COURT

The scene that kicks the story into motion is Zain’s appearance in court, arguing his parents should never have allowed him to be born. It would be a big scene for any actor, let alone one who’d never been on screen before. “Fortunately, he didn’t feel pressure because nothing impressed him,” says Labaki. “He didn’t work from a script. We would just talk and talk so he understood what the scene was. I would talk all the time. It was a very difficult job for our editor because we had to take my voice off all the time!”

YOU CAN’T CHOOSE FAMILY

Zain’s own observations were used to shape his character’s path, particularly with regards to how he reacts to his parents, who offer him no hope of a happy life and sell his teenage sister for marriage to a much older man. “He was so angry in those scenes,” says Labaki. “It was like he was angry at all fathers he’d seen beating their children. It didn’t take much for him to understand who the character was.”

BUT YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS

The relationship at the heart of the film is that between Zain and Rahil, an undocumented Ethiopian mother he meets at a fairground. To preserve the naturalism, Labaki kept them apart before shooting. “I didn’t rehearse much,” she says. “It was important they didn’t know each other well, to get that feeling on screen. As we were shooting, they became closer, became family. We shot for six months, so they really come to know each other and you see that.”

MINOR MIRACLES

Labaki’s script asked for some things that couldn’t possibly be scripted. Notably, one scene in which Rahil’s baby, Yonas, refuses to drink from a bottle because he wants his mother, who has been arrested. “I was asking for a miracle,” says Labaki. “What was I doing scripting that? You can’t ask a baby to refuse a bottle and then start crying and for Zain to know how to handle that. When it happened in front of my eyes, I felt like something bigger was pushing me to make this film. I got my miracle.”

HARSH REALITIES

Labaki says that she spent four years immersing herself in the lives of children who live like Zain, so that everything in the film was in some way based in reality. She didn’t want to exaggerate or invent story to sensationalise. She wanted to reflect their world as she’d seen it. “Everything is based on details I’ve seen,” she says. That includes a quietly heartbreaking scene in which Yonas is fed dry milk powder, because that’s all there is to eat. They don’t even have the water to make it drinkable. “I saw that a lot, because most of these children don’t have water,” Labaki continues. “I would go into apartments and see children on their own – on their own – opening a can of milk powder because they’re hungry. It’s all from things I’ve seen, but the terrible thing is that the reality is 100 times harsher.”

FACES IN THE CROWD

Perhaps the film’s most affecting scene has Zain and Yonas on the streets alone, unsure of how to survive without any adults to care for them. Labaki shot it in a very busy street, disguising her crew to meld in with the huge crowd of people who had no idea a film was being made. “There was a very disturbing reality in that scene,” says Labaki. “They’re alone on the sidewalk and people would pass them without looking, because it wasn’t unusual to see that. That was horrifying.”

ALONE AGAIN

Zain is devastated when he learns from his parents that his sister, the only member of his family he loved, has died due to complications with her pregnancy. He breaks down. “It took a very long time to get Zain to that moment where he’s so hurt he bursts into tears,” says Labaki. “He knows girls who were married at a very young age [like his sister in the film]. He understood, but it took maybe 40 takes to do that scene.”

REVENGE

In retaliation for his sister’s death, Zain attacks and stabs her much older husband, which gets him arrested and sent to Roumieh prison for five years. This pivotal moment in the story showed Labaki just how much of himself Al Rafeea was putting into his performance. “There are things Zain says that were not scripted that showed me he knows what he’s talking about,” she says. “We took out a lot of swearing, but through the swearing you could see his anger. Zain has seen so much. I could see how angry he is with life.”