Zain Al Rafeea

Zain Al Rafeea is a Syrian actor living in Norway. He is best known for his starring role in the 2018 Lebanese film Capernaum, which won the Jury Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Life and career

Al Rafeea was born in Daraa, Syria in 2004 before his family moved to Lebanon in 2012. A Syrian refugee, he grew up in the slums of Beirut with his parents. He was 12 and illiterate during the production of Capernaum. He had no acting experience. Al Rafeea's Capernaum character, Zain, is named for him.
In November 2018, director Nadine Labaki reported that Al Rafeea received a Norwegian passport in Norway and had been living there for several months: "He's going to school for the first time in his life. He's learning how to read and write. He's regained his childhood. He's playing in a garden; he's not playing anymore with knives and in garbage." Al Rafeea began attending school in Hammerfest.
For Capernaum, Al Rafeea was nominated for the Asia Pacific [Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor]. He also won Best Actor at the 2018 International Antalya Film Festival. The [New York Times] called his as performances one of the best of 2018. Wesley Morris wrote, "Every once in a while, you leave a movie having seen a performance that mocks all the other acting that came before it". James Verniere of the Boston Herald described Al Rafeea as "part Oliver Twist, part James Dean".
In 2021, he appeared as a villager in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Eternals.