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. 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 (MCU) film
Eternals. == Filmography ==