Zozo

Beirut during the civil war. Zozo is ten when he is cut off from his family in a single afternoon and left entirely on his own. First he has to survive the city, then get himself to Sweden and to the grandparents living there. When he arrives he discovers the war has not ended: no language, no friends, and the sounds he left behind still turning up at night. Josef Fares drew on his own migration for this. He was born in Beirut and came to Sweden at ten. The film is not literally his life, but it is plainly made by someone who knows what that break at that age is. It was his first drama after the comedies, and it never reduces the boy to an object of pity while showing the war.