Zain, a twelve-year-old boy living in the slums of Beirut, sues his own parents from a prison cell - not for anything they did to him directly, but simply for giving him a life this hard. Nadine Labaki builds Capernaum around that framing device, then spends most of its runtime following Zain backward through the streets, gutters, and refugee settlements of his short life so far, cast almost entirely with non-actors who had actually lived versions of what's on screen. The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes off a fifteen-minute standing ovation and went on to an Oscar nomination, largely on the strength of its two child performances - one of them, remarkably, an actual infant who somehow carries entire scenes. It's a hard watch by design, but one that earns its outrage rather than manufacturing it. Variety called it a splendid addition to the ranks of great guttersnipe dramas, while Empire described it as a gripping, sympathetic cry for the dispossessed. Cult Movie Mondays: Capernaum (2018, Lebanon) Monday, September 14th | 8:00 PM | TicTic, Phnom Penh Free Entry & Popcorn - Arrive early for sofa, bed, or beanbag seating.
