Zozo (2005)

Director:

Josef Fares

Writer:

Josef Fares (writer)

Release Date:

2 September 2005 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

There is always hope.

Plot:

Story of an Arabic boy moving from Lebanon to Sweden. |

Plot Keywords:

Sweden | Lebanon | Soldier | Soccer | Theft

Awards:

6 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Imad Creidi	...	Zozo
Antoinette Turk	...	Rita
Elias Gergi	...	Zozo's grandfather
Carmen Lebbos	...	Zozo's Mom
Viktor Axelsson	...	Leo
Charbel Iskandar	...	Zozo's father
Yasmine Awad	...	Zozo's grandmother
Jad Stehpan	...	Zozo's brother Dani
Tatiana Sarkis	...	Zozo's sister
Elie Stello	...	Amil
Fidel Béchara	...	Riad
Fouad Hojeij	...	Headmaster Lebanon
Abdallah Jabbour	...	French Teacher
Nazem Issa	...	Kaak Salesman
Elias Abdul	...	Bread Salesman (as Elias Abdul Ahad)

Runtime:

105 min | Canada:103 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:

Sweden | UK | Denmark

Language:

Arabic | Swedish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Norway:11 | Finland:K-11 | Sweden:11 | Singapore:PG | Australia:M | Netherlands:12

Filming Locations:

Beirut, Lebanon

Company:

Memfis Film

Trivia:

Selected to represent Sweden at the 78th Annual Academy Awards (2006) in the Foreign Language Film category.

When your life shifts from fairly good to hell. When you get caught up in war.

The young Arabian boy, Zozo lives a fairly normal life with his family in Beirut. He's got good friends, and goes to an Arabic school. His grandparents live in Sweden, and have been motivating him and his family to come too. Away from the war. To a place what they saw as a paradise. A place where there was not war. As he described it to his friends, A country with beautiful girls and pretty houses.

From that ideal life, the movie leads you through the tragedy that Zozo experiences.

Zozo is an amazingly beautiful film (but yet no where near dramatic), that shows the world from an dreaming, mature eleven year old boy's point of view. The poetic and surrealistic filming captures the emotions in an extraordinary way, and surreal chapters of his dreams bring you closer to his mind and imagination.

I've never before cried over a movie. But the thought of this movie actually only being half fictional, since there is, and always will be war, made me feel utterly selfish, and at these circumstances you must either be a rock hard sailor or an emotionally dead soldier to at least not be a little touched by this emotional and poetic filming, and feel sympathy for the people who have to go through these circumstances. When they are forced into a war they never asked for. The victims of political arguments.