Capernaum

Nadine Labiki has created a real-life Dickensian drama with performances of breathtaking naturalism.

It's a very harrowing portrait... Zain Al Rafeea is amazing.

It's essential viewing for the ways in which it illuminates brutally hard lives many of us could otherwise not imagine, and for the craft of its nonprofessional performers.

Jail and courtroom scenes, at the beginning and end, may be a tad implausible, not to mention scrappy. But the middle section, mostly shot on handheld cameras on the streets of Beirut, is breathtaking, topical, hilarious, tender and brutal.

Capernaum's odyssey, in which Zain battles the hazards of shantytowns, souks, prisons and betrayals with wily, angry energy, paints him as a resourceful figure fighting impossible odds rather than the passive child victim of charity adverts.

Rafeea, a non-professional actor and Syrian refugee, is the film's secret weapon. At times, the tragedy unfolding on screen feels borderline unwatchable, but his strange, fascinating, eerily adult face offers a litany of minute expressions.

It hammers and hammers towards making a point by giving us a tour of explicit pain and struggle without any subtlety.

The powerful, haunting story of a 12-year-old living in a Beirut slum who sues his parents for neglect.

In the end, Capernaum may be hard to watch for some, easy to admire for many, but Labaki’s sad and tender film has the devastating power of a wrecking ball that can’t be denied, that leaves an indomitable mark that can’t be shaken, with staggering impact

Desperately moving and, at times, difficult to watch, Nadine Labaki's Capernaum is resolutely unflinching in its depiction of Lebanon's forgotten children..,.