1. Nadine Labaki is a Lebanese and Canadian actress, director, and activist.
43 Facts About Nadine Labaki
1. 2.
Nadine Labaki is known for demonstrating everyday aspects of Lebanese life and covering a range of political issues such as war, poverty, and feminism.
3.
Nadine Labaki is the first female Arab director to be nominated for an Oscar in the category for Best Foreign Language Film for her third directorial effort, Capernaum.
4.
Nadine Labaki was born in Baabdat, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon, to Maronite parents Antoine and Antoinette Nadine Labaki.
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Nadine Labaki's father is an engineer, while her mother is a homemaker.
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Nadine Labaki spent the first seventeen years of her life living in a war-torn environment, until 1991 when the civil war in Lebanon had ended.
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Nadine Labaki's grandfather owned a small theatre in Lebanon where she found her love for film.
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Nadine Labaki began her career with Studio El Fan, a Lebanese talent show, in 1990.
9.
At the talent show, Nadine Labaki won a prize for directing various music video productions.
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Nadine Labaki obtained a degree in audiovisual studies at Saint Joseph University in Beirut.
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Nadine Labaki is unique among her fellow Lebanese and Arab filmmakers in that she was not educated or trained abroad.
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In 2003, Nadine Labaki began to gain popular attention in the Arab media.
13.
Nadine Labaki defended her script, stating that Ajram was actually portraying an "assertive and powerful female figure".
14.
In 2005, Nadine Labaki took part in the Cannes Film Festival Residence for six months.
15.
The idea for this film first came about when Nadine Labaki was pregnant with her son in 2008.
16.
Nadine Labaki speaks of friends becoming enemies due to religious differences.
17.
In late 2013, Nadine Labaki started work on her third feature film called Capernaum which was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
18.
Nadine Labaki strives to sue his parents for bringing him into a world of suffering and negligence of children.
19.
Nadine Labaki wrote the screenplay along with Jihad Hojeily, Michelle Kesrouani, Georges Khabbaz and her husband, Khaled Mouzanar.
20.
For three years prior to writing, Nadine Labaki extensively researched the city's children to gather accounts of their experiences, stories and pasts.
21.
Nadine Labaki used mostly non-professional actors for this film, including lead child actor Zain Al Rafeea, who was found in one of the slums playing with friends, a Syrian refugee himself.
22.
Capernaum won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and Nadine Labaki won Best Directing at the 12th Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
23.
Nadine Labaki was selected to be on the jury for the Un Certain Regard section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
24.
Nadine Labaki's movie Capernaum was nominated in the foreign-language Oscars category, which was a first for a female director in 2019.
25.
Nadine Labaki is the first female Arab director to ever be nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
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Nadine Labaki started acting in short films during the early 2000s.
27.
In 2006, Nadine Labaki starred in "Bosta," a Lebanese musical comedy.
28.
Nadine Labaki starred in Stray Bullet, directed by Georges Hachem in 2010.
29.
Nadine Labaki appears in the Moroccan production Rock The Casbah, directed by Laila Marrakchi, alongside actors Hiam Abbas and Lubna Azabal.
30.
Nadine Labaki's films cover the Lebanese Civil War and the lasting impacts it had on the country.
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Nadine Labaki's experiences impacted Labaki personally, as well as how it shaped her film-making.
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Nadine Labaki then decided that talking about problems such as poverty and the refugee crisis is important.
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Nadine Labaki's films have no solutions for the issues Lebanon faces, but she hopes that her films will "simply shake audiences out of their chronic lethargy".
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Nadine Labaki has stated that her filmmaking and activism are the same, believing that cinema can effect social change.
35.
Nadine Labaki often finds men, women, and children who live in the real neighborhoods shown on screen where they re-enact scenes from their own experiences, often in some of Beirut's grittiest slums.
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Nadine Labaki is known for spending long periods to research and pick the cast for her films.
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Nadine Labaki immerses herself in the lives of her subjects and spent four years researching her subject and the mistreated children in Beirut.
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Nadine Labaki purposely did not want professional actors, she explained, and the spontaneity of each authenticates the plot of women supporting each other as they cope with their problems.
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Nadine Labaki is multilingual, fluent in Arabic, French, English and Italian.
40.
In 2009, Nadine Labaki gave birth to her first boy, Walid.
41.
In 2016, Nadine Labaki received an honorary degree from the American University of Beirut and was the speaker at the 150th Commencement Ceremony.
42.
Nadine Labaki was a candidate on the list of the new political movement Beirut Madinati for the capital's May 2016 local election.
43.
In 2014, Nadine Labaki was the goodwill ambassador for the bilingual and multimedia campaign produced by The Brave Heart Fund.