After Caramel and Maintenant on va où ? the Lebanese film director Nadine Labaki completed shooting her latest feature film in Beirut in March.
Carphanaüm, a provisional title, is about children’s rights. Preparation for the film took three years, much of which Labaki spent with abused children. She went to detention centres, juvenile courts, even camps to portray the reality of the situation accurately.
As with her previous two films, she has cast inexperienced amateurs to make this dramatised film as authentic as possible. The director has said: “I have a problem with the word “act”, I do not want my actors to act. I want them to be themselves, to make the story theirs. I need to love these actors, I want them to fascinate me. Only then do we decide to set off on the adventure.” The Lebanese director will “act” a lawyer in her own film.
The film is produced by Khaled Mouzanar, a composer and Nadine Labaki’s husband. The film should be released by the end of the year.
Sources: Télérama, L’Orient Le Jour
