Capharnaum

I watched Capharnaum in the American Cosmograph some days ago. When I decided to attend the session I was not particularly excited. The review in the monthly program was good, but not particularly outstanding, but as Lebanon and its chaotic society is always an appealing topic for me I thought I should watch it (also, Toulouse is no longer my primary residence and when I'm there I pretty much feel like going for some indy cinema).

I was just blown away by this masterpiece. Maybe this is the best film that I've watched since Incendies. It's amazing how a handful of artists (this film is ART in uppercase) can transform misery and suffering into beauty and hope, because the daily fight of the SURVIVORS portrayed in this masterpiece is so inspiring. This film is so profoundly humane that really helps us keep alive the humanist inside us. When many of us are fed up of many of those so called refugees that are not escaping from any war (is there a war in Morocco or Albania? ), that were persecutors rather than persecutees (all those that helped the Islamists in Syria and are now fleeding cause hopefully they've lost their bloody war), and just come here with the intent to take as much as they can from our society without providing anything (anything positive I mean) in exchange... it's really good to show the lives of real refugees, people who have lived in the shit for decades (I won't enter to discuss the so difficoult Israel-Palestine affair, but Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon experience a life of misery and hopelessness like few others), and how they fight day after day for their subsistence. It's also good to be exposed to the fair amount of dignity in those migrants like the Ethiopian or Filipino women that work so hard to try to build a better life in such a harsh country like Lebanon. With this kind of migrants there is no doubt about how fucked up their previous lives had to be in order for them to choose such an uncertain path. They are not doing it hoping to live on social benefits for the rest of their lives... like some of those coming to Western Europe in the last years.

The refugee/migrant kids and women in this film are the personification of courage, dignity and solidarity, a solidarity among the poorest where religion, skin color or ethnicity do no exist, just human beings fighting together for survival. These are the migrants that I would love to see replacing all the Islamoracaille that is tearing apart our societies from inside at the same time that they steal from it as much as they can.