Kids who live a happy childhood dream about what they will be when they grow up. But less 1 kids, who live in poverty, sometimes wonder why they were born in the first place.
Children like these 2 Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's new film Capernau (《何以为家》), which arrived in Chinese mainland 3 on April 29 , 2019.
In the slums (贫民窟) of Beirut, Lebanon's capital, Labaki saw kids selling gum or flowers or 4 carrying heavy gas tanks. Some of them were alone on the street, unfed and 5.
One of these kids told her, "I don't know 6 I was born if no one is going to love me, if no one is going to 7 me before I go to sleep, or if I'm going to be beaten up every day."
This is how Capernaum begins: A 12-year-old boy named Zain who lives in one of Beirut's slums, charges his parents for giving 8 to him, even though, he says, they knew they couldn't 9 him.
Capernaum is fictional but ifs as 10 as it gets. There are no 11 actors in this film. Zain, for example, is 12 by a boy with the same name, a Syrian refugee (难民) called Zain Al Rafeea. He had never slept in a 13 before the film, or gone to school. He didn't even have papers to 14 he was a human being—just like his character in the film.
By making the film, Labaki wanted to "become the voice of these kids", according to The Guardian. The voice is being heard. It ran first at Cannes Film Festival in May, 2018, and 15 the Jury Prize. Soon after the festival, under the 16 of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Zain and his family got the chance to resettle in Norway. They now live in a house by the sea, and Zain is going to school.
When Labaki told The New York Times that she wanted the film "to go beyond the borders of just being a film" and be "a 17 for help", she wasn't 18 how big an impact it would have. "I might never get anywhere, but 19 I want to try," she said.
But she has certainly gone somewhere indeed—to say the least, the real-life Zain is now able to 20 his future.
