TheatreOne's Fringe Flicks presents Capernaum

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Sunday, March 24th, 2019
Sunday at 1, 4 & 7pm Monday at 7pm

TheatreOne’s Fringe Flicks is proud to present the most challenging and most important film of the season – Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum. This Oscar nominated film was also the Jury Prize-winner at Cannes last year, and is the kind of film that “simultaneously seems so real and so impossible that watching [it] is like witnessing a magic trick you can’t figure out.” (The Telegraph)

Set in Beirut, Capernaum, which means “chaos”, centers around Zain, who is only 12, but has seen enough of this life to resent his very existence. With numerous children to care for, his parents resort to some inventive scams, such as saturating garments with tramadol, which they then pass along to Zain's incarcerated brother who reconstitutes the drug and sells it to fellow prisoners. More alarmingly, Zain's parents have sold his 11-year-old sister's hand in marriage, which prompts Zain to run away. He befriends an Ethiopian cleaning woman, whose baby he eventually becomes guardian to. But life on the streets offers Zain fewer and fewer places to hide. Encouraged by a current affairs program seeking to draw attention to child poverty, Zain files a lawsuit against his parents for giving birth to him. The trial provides the frame through which Zain's story unfolds.

The leading actor, Zain Al Rafeea is a Syrian refugee from Daraa whose life was forever changed after his experience. Discovered by film director Nadine Labaki in the streets of Beirut, Zain and his family have found a new beginning in Norway. Until three months ago, Zain’s life shared similarities to the character he plays in Capernaum. He was living below the poverty line, like many other Syrian refugees and Lebanese host communities. (UNHCR)

Tickets to Fringe Flicks are $13 from theatreone.org, 250-754-7587 and at the door.

https://www.theatreone.org/index.php/2018-19-season/fringe-flicks/