Zain Al Rafeea

Al Rafeea was born in Daraa, Syria in 2004 before his family moved to Lebanon in 2012.^[2][3] A Syrian refugee, he grew up in the slums of Beirut with his parents.^[4][5] He was 12 and illiterate during the production of Capernaum.^[6] He had no acting experience.^[7] Al Rafeea's Capernaum character, Zain, is named for him.^[8]

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."^[9] Al Rafeea began attending school in Hammerfest.^[10]

For Capernaum, Al Rafeea was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor.^[11] He also won Best Actor at the 2018 International Antalya Film Festival.^[12] 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".^[7] James Verniere of the Boston Herald described Al Rafeea as "part Oliver Twist, part James Dean".^[13]

In 2021, he appeared as a villager in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Eternals.^[14]