Receiving one of the longest standing ovations at Cannes in recent history, Capernaum is a galvanizing account of a young boy taking a stand. Resentful of his very existence, firecracker 12-year-old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) seeks to sue his parents for bringing him into the world without any means to care for him, let alone pay for his citizenry papers, which makes him an undocumented ghost among the shanty neighborhoods of Beirut. While at home, he assists his family in smuggling clothes drenched with tramadol into the local prison for his brother’s illicit business. But when Zain’s parents sell his younger sister to a smarmy local grocer, the boy flees town, encountering a bevy of wild characters before circumstances make him the guardian of a one-year-old Ethiopian refugee, Yonas. Capturing the true, heartbreaking stories of Lebanese children, writer/director Nadine Labaki frames Zain’s story through his stirring courtroom testimony and holds up a mirror to a torn country that has tragically forgotten its own.

In competition for the FIPRESCI Award.

Director Nadine Labaki