a Beirut child sues his parents for giving birth to him – before ending up on the street caring for a stranger’s baby Read moreI was agnostic about this movie when I first saw it and some of those doubts are still there on a second viewing There is a bit of button-pushing melodrama going on and the film is flawed by Labaki’s opening premise the kid supposedly sues his parents for giving birth to him This has evidently been funded as a stunt by a TV current affairs show to draw attention to child poverty but it is an outrageous stretch to believe it would be entertained for one moment by the legal system And that’s setting aside the implausibility of this kid being allowed to make a lengthy (and free) telephone call to the TV station from prison in the first place and Labaki’s film brings home what poverty and desperation mean and conversely what love and humanity mean They are making money smuggling opioid drugs into prison (where his elder brother is a convict) his careworn mum Souad (Kawsar Al Haddad) and dad Selim (Fadi Yousef) are getting ready to take money from their exploitative landlord in return for handing over Zain’s 11-year-old sister Sahar (Cedra Izzam) to this man’s son as a child bride Zain runs away and encounters kindly Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) and her baby son Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) He also encounters the sinister businessman and entrepreneur Aspro (Alaa Chouchnieh) What is so refreshing about Al Rafeea’s performance is that his kid is not a passive He is always angrily shoving and punching and defiantly insulting people Another sort of film would imply that his anger is a character flaw that has been movingly cured by his redemptive experience looking after baby Yonas Looking after Yonas has only made Zain angrier more intimately acquainted with poverty and injustice more aware of the awful choices into which anyone can be forced by cold and hunger tougher and funnier film than anything Labaki has made before and the images of Yonas adrift with Zain in the pitiless streets are deeply affecting: visions of innocence and fragility and yet a transcendental sort of survival Cynical Aspro calls the baby “a badass – like his mother” and you can see how this heartless person finds it convenient to pretend everyone else is heartless as well And yet there is something in what he is saying Perhaps Yonas does look like a badass – a badass in embryo They must each answer a question put to Zain: where are your papers “I need proof you’re a human being.” Statelessness illegality: these are not just technical points by which your humanity is affirmed or withheld Capernaum is not a cry from the heart – but an angry shout.