Capernaum - Chaos and Miracles opens with a symbolic and provocative act: 12-year-old Zain decides to sue his parents for having given birth to him without offering him love, sustenance and care.
In a long flashback, the story of this child and his brothers and sisters who grow up in conditions of extreme poverty, totally abandoned to themselves, is retraced.
Zain's privileged bond with his sister Soah.
Parents who live by gimmicks and do not have the tools or the sensitivity to understand what needs their children have.
Of the encounter with Rahil, an Ethiopian immigrant, and her son Yonas.
And a tangle of streets encounters with shady individuals and complex and intricate events.
Capernaum is a film that digs into the emotional abyss until it takes your breath away.
It hurts, like a punch that goes straight to the stomach.
So uncomfortable and cumbersome that the viewer feels the desire to leave the cinema prematurely and at the same time keep him glued to his chair until the last moment.
Capernaum is poignant, heartbreaking, realistic and raw but equally overflowing with humanity. Hard, but constantly crossed by a thread of hope.
It's a film to watch. That pushes you, forces you to look at what happens next door, to consider what would seem distant from anyone, but that so distant certainly is not.
The characters in the film
In Capernaum, each character in the film has a double turn-up and is divided between what he or she would like to do and what he or she is forced to do in order to survive.
Zain - the main character - is a child who shows a high resilience. He is driven by the social context to make decisions that are inadequate for his age and to be responsible for them. Although he constantly perceives that he is being ignored - particularly by his parents - he tries in every way to make his voice heard and struggles to build his own identity.
Zain is not happy to be born, because he has to fight every day to survive. He has never know the typical carefulness of children: from the very beginning, he had to become an adult, working daily to obtain money and to escape from danger and death.
He never smiles during the film. Her eyes express deep sadness, but also anger and desire to react and dream.
Somehow, he manages to look beyond misery and poverty, fighting for a better world and succeeding, even though he has not received love, in taking total care of someone (for example his sister Soah or the child Yonas) doing or inventing anything to protect him.
On the other side are his parents. A father and a mother who does not give affection to their children have no means to support and care for them, send them to work or force them to marry. They are two unfortunate, unconscious people, whom the viewer can hate and pity at the same time. They think they have to comply with the laws of nature by carrying out the only task of procreation, starting from the irrefutable conception that life is always and in any case a gift.
To be born, to exist in spite of everything: even if in discomfort, in poverty, and in suffering.
Zain's parents are victims - lived in degradation and misery in turn - who become executioners, perpetuating the same conditions for their children. Thinking that we only have to conceive and give birth, believing that we have no other choice and that we no longer have to take care of anything after birth. Not even to register his children at the registry office.
Zain and his brothers in fact for the State are not born, do not exist. They cannot enjoy human rights nor can they receive any health care. They risk going to their deaths every day without anyone noticing it.
The decision of the protagonist to sue his parents is a symbolic gesture on behalf of all children who - not having asked to be born - claim the right to be loved and cared for.
And when, in the end, Zain manages to obtain his first identity document - finally - he will smile.