OVERLAY REPORT

In the 2018 film *Capernaum*, the darkest moment for the lead character, **Zain**, occurs when he is forced by extreme desperation to **sell baby Yonas to a human trafficker named Aspro.** ### The Darkest Moment: Selling Yonas While Zain suffers throughout the film—living in squalor, being forced to sell drugs, and watching his beloved 11-year-old sister Sahar be sold into marriage for chickens—the selling of Yonas represents his absolute rock bottom. After Sahar is taken and Zain runs away, he is taken in by Rahil, an undocumented Ethiopian migrant. When Rahil is arrested and fails to return, Zain (only 12 himself) becomes the sole caretaker for her infant son, Yonas. For several weeks, Zain demonstrates incredible resilience, using a skateboard and a pot as a makeshift stroller to navigate the streets of Beirut and "scamming" for food and supplies. However, the "darkest moment" arrives when Zain is evicted from their shack and has no way to feed Yonas. Exhausted and facing starvation, he makes the heart-wrenching decision to hand Yonas over to the forger/trafficker Aspro. He does this not for greed, but because Aspro promises a "better life" for the baby and offers Zain the forged papers he needs to flee to Sweden. The scene is physically and emotionally harrowing; Zain is seen dragging the baby through the streets and ultimately walking away with tears streaming down his face, having compromised his own moral core of protectiveness to survive. ### How He Overcomes It Zain "overcomes" this darkness by reclaiming his agency through a radical act of defiance: **suing his parents.** 1. **The Lawsuit as a Voice:** After learning that Sahar died in childbirth and being imprisoned for stabbing her "husband," Zain decides he will no longer be a silent victim of the cycle of poverty. He contacts a TV show from prison and announces he is suing his parents for "giving him life." This lawsuit serves as a platform to expose the systemic neglect he and other "unregistered" children face. 2. **Justice for Yonas:** During the court proceedings, Zain’s testimony leads to the exposure of Aspro’s trafficking ring. The authorities raid Aspro’s home, rescuing the children he held. This results in the **reunion of Yonas and Rahil**, effectively reversing Zain's darkest choice and providing a sense of moral redemption. 3. **The Symbolic Victory (The Smile):** The film concludes with Zain getting his official identification photo taken. Throughout the entire movie, Zain never smiles, his face a mask of hardened "adult" cynicism. In the final shot, the photographer tells him the photo is for an ID card—proof that he finally "exists" in the eyes of the law. Zain looks into the camera and **smiles for the first time**, signifying that he has finally secured a sense of identity and a glimmer of hope for a future where he is recognized as a human being.