Capernaum, an ancient city in Galilee, located on the northwestern shores of Lake Tiberias in Israel. According to the gospels Jesus lived there after leaving Nazareth and began his preaching from here.

C'est un Capharnaum means to be in a very crowded place, full of people; an unclear, incomprehensible situation, such as to cause disorientation.

This is the condition in which Zain finds himself, a 12-year-old boy who barely looks 8, who lives with his parents and many siblings in extreme poverty.

To King Midas who asked what was the best and most desirable thing for man, the wise Silenus, interpreter of the tragic meaning of existence replies, "miserable and ephemeral race, daughter of chance and sorrow, why do you compel me to tell you what is most advantageous for you Not to feel? The best is absolutely unattainable for you: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing...

First scene: Zain is handcuffed, he has knowingly committed a serious crime. Then he stands before the judge to denounce his parents for "bringing him into the world."

His great love is his 11-year-old sister, whom he intends to protect at all costs from the enticements of a shopkeeper to whom she seems destined as a bride-child. Therefore Zain tries to make her hide her menarche, especially from her parents who would remove her from home by giving her away as a bride.

This begins the ordeal of the young boy, who, having lost his sister, leaves home and begins a 'wandering existence, far from the one he lived at home, abused by his parents and forced to work on the streets to support his family.

He will encounter slums, illegal immigration, baby trafficking, juvenile detention, and the dream of reaching Sweden.

And it is by virtue of an illegal immigrant, who must pay fifteen hundred dollars to get an identity card, without which she could be sent back to her home country, that Zian manages to survive by taking care of the woman's small child who must work and try to build a legal identity.

The little boy will do for the infant everything his parents never did for him while all the evils of the world seem to continually undermine his stainless conscious will.

The daily grind will not hesitate to become increasingly violent and unbearable, and Zian will have to give in to underhanded economic enticements and return home where he will learn the fate of his sister-bride-child, subjected, like others, to sexual intercourse with bodies not yet formed for the act.

The young boy's reaction will be extreme and in the juvenile prison, where he will end up, he will not hesitate to insult his mother who naively informs him that she is expecting another child.

A city hell, where children, like adults, dirty, malnourished and without birth certificates get by selling anything to survive.

Who is responsible for all this we are not given to know, because it is now obvious and taken for granted.

For there to be a 20 percent of the world's population living in the most unbridled luxury there will have to be an 80 percent living off what is left until those living in the most inhuman and radical misery and despair.

There is no need for Labaki to focus on this aspect, not least because the hellish picture proposed by Capharnaüm is nevertheless aptly photographed and represented by the gaze into the abyss of a child, an immigrant of Syrian origin, tracked down in a Lebanese supermarket where he worked as a clerk.

To King Midas who asked what was the best and most desirable thing for man, the wise Silenus, interpreter of the tragic meaning of existence replies, "miserable and ephemeral race, daughter of chance and punishment, why do you compel me to tell you what is most advantageous for you Not to feel? The best is absolutely unattainable for you: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing...

BUT THE SECOND BEST THING FOR YOU IS TO DIE EARLY."

As an identity seller declares, a bottle of Ketchup has a production and expiration date, many people do not possess any and therefore are not, are nothing.

And Zian knows this very well, which is why he denounces his unfortunate parents for bringing him into the world without knowing why or when he was born and without being able to register his birth.

Therefore, only the last surprising, sublime final image of the film will be the last, true, unique, inevitable, conscious gesture of a denied existence.

20-Aug-2023 by Beatrice