We can’t wait for the release!
It looks like 2019 is the year of Nadine Labaki. The Lebanese director, who is the president of the jury for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, revealed that she is working on a documentary, inspired by her Oscar-nominated feature film Capernaum.
Nadine’s 2018 Cannes entry went on to have a life of its own, after winning the Festival’s Jury Prize. The heartbreaking movie went on to nab a nomination from every prestigious award. The 45-year-old broke many records and made history with her Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Awards nominations. Unfortunately, she went on to lose all these prizes to Netflix’s Roma, which had a clean sweep.
The movie got a China release, where it currently holds the third spot at the box office even after more than two weeks in theatre and has so far grossed over $44 million. The film’s success in the Asian nation comes as a big surprise to her, but she believes that the film had likely resonated because of its universal themes and the fact that her actors had really lived through the circumstances they re-created onscreen.
While at a Variety-Kering Women in Motion talk at the Majestic Hotel, Nadine admitted that she wouldn’t say no to the chance to direct a Hollywood superhero film, especially if it was a Wonder-woman type film. “I’d do it if I had the freedom to turn her into something that every woman in this room would want to be,” she said.
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She also revealed that is currently working on a documentary about Capernaum, which followed Zain, a 12-year-old boy who resorts to stealing and begging to survive on the streets of Beirut, and proceeds to sue his parents for bringing him into a world of suffering. Nadine said that she had recorded several things over the film’s multi-year shoot, so she decided to share it as a documentary. “During the shooting process, fiction really became reality. The whole process was so interesting and intense that we’re making a documentary about the whole thing, following the characters and where they are now,” she said.
“It’s difficult to turn the page and say, now I’m moving on to another project; there’s still a lot to do,” she explained. “Maybe because I come from a place where everything needs to be rethought, I feel it’s a duty, not a choice, to make films that will have an impact on the society that you live in. I see it as a mission.”
Media: Getty, Instagram
