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Lebanon’s 'Capernaum' on Shortlist of Oscar Nominees for Best Foreign Film

Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki, her husband Lebanese producer Khaled Mouzanar and Syrian actor Zain Rafeea pose with the Jury Prize trophy at Cannes. (AFP)
Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki, her husband Lebanese producer Khaled Mouzanar and Syrian actor Zain Rafeea pose with the Jury Prize trophy at Cannes. (AFP)
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Lebanon’s 'Capernaum' on Shortlist of Oscar Nominees for Best Foreign Film

Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki, her husband Lebanese producer Khaled Mouzanar and Syrian actor Zain Rafeea pose with the Jury Prize trophy at Cannes. (AFP)
Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki, her husband Lebanese producer Khaled Mouzanar and Syrian actor Zain Rafeea pose with the Jury Prize trophy at Cannes. (AFP)

Lebanese director Nadine Labaki’s “Capernaum” was shortlisted Monday for a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.

It joins eight other movies that will be vying to be nominated for Hollywood’s top honor.

Shortlists, decided on by executive committees in the film academy, help narrow the playing field in many of the categories before they are whittled down further to five final nominations in late January.

“Capernaum” was shortlisted along with Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma", Lee Chang-dong's thriller "Burning", Poland's "Cold War," Japan's "Shoplifters," Colombia's "Birds of Passage," Denmark's "The Guilty," Germany's "Never Look Away" and Kazakhstan's "Ayka."

Earlier this month, “Capernaum” was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes.

The critically acclaimed film, about a streetwise child who survives on the streets, has already won the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

It stars 13-year-old Syrian refugee child turned actor Zain al-Rafeea.

The movie has garnered a string of wins and nominations on the festival circuit

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced on January 22, a one month before the Oscars on February 24

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Varieties

Venice Is Sinking… But Italian Engineer Suggests Plan to Lift the City

Boats sail on a canal as flags of EU, Italy and Venice fly at half-mast at the building of Veneto Regional Council to pay tribute to the late Pope Francis in Venice on April 22, 2025. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP)
Boats sail on a canal as flags of EU, Italy and Venice fly at half-mast at the building of Veneto Regional Council to pay tribute to the late Pope Francis in Venice on April 22, 2025. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP)
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Venice Is Sinking… But Italian Engineer Suggests Plan to Lift the City

Boats sail on a canal as flags of EU, Italy and Venice fly at half-mast at the building of Veneto Regional Council to pay tribute to the late Pope Francis in Venice on April 22, 2025. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP)
Boats sail on a canal as flags of EU, Italy and Venice fly at half-mast at the building of Veneto Regional Council to pay tribute to the late Pope Francis in Venice on April 22, 2025. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP)

It’s the “floating city” but also the sinking city. In the past century, Venice has subsided by around 25 centimeters, or nearly 10 inches, CNN reported.

Meanwhile, the average sea level in Venice has risen nearly a foot since 1900.

It’s a tortuous pairing that means one thing: Not just regular flooding, but an inexorable slump of this most beloved of cities into the watery depths of its famous lagoon.

For visitors, its precarious status is part of the attraction of Venice — a need to visit now before it’s too late, a symbol that humanity cannot win against the power of nature.

For Venetians, the city’s island location has for centuries provided safety against invasion, but also challenges.

Tides have got ever higher and more frequent as the climate crisis intensifies. And the city sinks around two millimeters a year due to regular subsidence.

But what if you could just... raise the city? It sounds like science fiction. In fact it’s the idea of a highly respected engineer who thinks it could be the key to saving Venice.

While the Italian government is currently spending millions of euros each year raising flood barriers to block exceptionally high tides from entering the lagoon, Pietro Teatini, associate professor in hydrology and hydraulic engineering at the nearby University of Padua, says that pumping water into the earth deep below the city would raise the seabed on which it sits, pushing Venice skyward.

By raising the level of the city by 30 centimeters (just under 12 inches), Teatini believes that he could gift Venice two or three decades — during which time the city could work out a permanent way to fight the rising tides.

“We can say we have in front of us 50 years [including the lifespan of the MOSE] to develop a new strategy,” he says, according to CNN. “We have to develop a much more drastic project.”