Capernaum's reviews
Media reviews
The Telegraph
Nadine Labaki?s sensational new film, a late-breaking frontrunner for this year?s Palme d?Or at Cannes, turns the plight of this lad growing up in the slums and streets of Beirut into a social-realist blockbuster.
New York Times
'Capernaum', a sprawling tale wrenched from real life, goes beyond the conventions of documentary or realism into a mode of representation that doesn?t quite have a name.
Roger Ebert
In 'Capernaum' the heartache of the underprivileged is on such interminable display that you feel the physical hurt in your bones. But the manner in which the filmmaker renders these pains somehow doesn?t feel exploitative or gratuitous.
Variety
Nothing in director Nadine Labaki's first two pleasant but tonally inconsistent features, 'Caramel' and Where Do We Go Now?' approaches the power and skill of 'Capernaum' which represents a major leap forward in all departments.
Roger Ebert
It's a heart-rending melodramatic cocktail with touches of light humor, beautiful but wronged children, and characters who function as certified villains despite the fact that circumstances render them victims themselves.
The Wrap
Days after watching the movie, I still have some reservations about how abuse is shown in the film, but it?s hauntingly effective. I haven?t been able to shake those images since.
The Hollywood Reporter
Labaki lures such outstanding performances out of the almost entirely non-professional cast and sketches such a credible view of this wretchedly poor milieu that the flaws are mostly forgivable.
The A.V. Club
The kind of social-issue sadness pile that confuses nonstop hardship for drama, begging for our tears at every moment.
The Guardian
For all its occasional sentimentality, this film is about the link between poverty and anger. It?s a much angrier, tougher, and sometimes funnier, film than you might imagine from its cloying opening premise.
Indiewire
Despite having the best baby performance ever, Nadine Labaki?s latest is a well-intentioned mess.