Movie theatres usually discourage talking but our latest series is designed to encourage it — before and after (not during) the show. Aimed at film lovers 55+ (but open to all), Talking Pictures offers audience-friendly festival films, refreshments, and an open invitation to chat about our shared experience of the movie. Tickets are just $10. Bring a buddy and get two tickets for $16!
In the slums of Beirut, hardened 12-year-old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea, amazing) sues his parents for “bringing him into the world.” Beginning with that shocking scene, director Nadine Labaki (Caramel) then flashes back to show the poverty and turmoil that have been a constant in Zain’s life and which have led him to this drastic juncture. Either ignored by his parents or forced by them to engage in a drug-smuggling scheme, Zain finally reaches the breaking point when his parents essentially sell off his beloved 11-year-old sister as a child bride to a sleazy local merchant. Zain takes off. With nowhere to go, he is forced to live on the street until illegal Ethiopian refugee Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), and toddler Yonas (played by one-year-old Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) take him in. His new job as babysitter seems ideal — until Rahil fails to return one day. As Zain and Yonas fend for themselves (you will be asking yourself how the director elicited such an amazing performance from the toddler), Labaki crafts a deeply empathetic melodrama that is as moving as anything you’ll see this year.
Labaki’s sensational new film… turns the plight of this lad… into a social-realist blockbuster — fired by furious compassion and teeming with sorrow, yet strewn with diamond-shards of beauty, wit and hope… Shot over six months on location in Beirut, Capernaum has the same powers and limitations of postwar neorealist films like De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Rossellini’s Germany, Year Zero… The result is a film that already feels like a landmark.
Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph
It’s a fairy tale and an opera, a potboiler and a news bulletin, a howl of protest and an anthem of resistance.
AO Scott, New York Times
An absolute heartbreaker.
Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Prepare to be blown away.
Emily Yoshida, Vulture
Nadine Labaki
Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, Kawthar Al Haddad, Nadine Labaki
Lebanon
2018
In Arabic and Amharic with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Akram Safa
Producer
Michel Merkt
Co-Producer
Pierre Sarraf
Screenwriter
Nadine Labaki, Jihad Hojeilly, Michelle Keserwany
Cinematography
Christopher Aoun
Editor
Konstantin Bock, Laure Gardette
Original Music
Khaled Mouzanar
Also Playing
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Dawn Pemberton Sings Aretha + Amazing Grace Film Screening
These dates are going to knock your socks off: one of the all-time great concert films, Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1972, and Canada's own Queen of Soul, Dawn Pemberton, performing live in Aretha's honour.