06/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: Focusing on two African teenagers’ voyage to Europe, Matteo Garrone maintains his usual formal rigour but does not give the viewer a true impression of the horrors of migration

Seydou Sarr in Io Capitano

Io Capitano [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is the new film by the multi-award-winning director of Dogman [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Matteo Garrone
film profile] and Gomorrah [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Domenico Procacci
interview: Jean Labadie
interview: Matteo Garrone
film profile], Matteo Garrone, and is in competition at the Venice Film Festival. It is an intense and moving migratory journey from Africa to one of the gates of Europe: Italy. The movie is narrated from the point of view of the two main characters, Seydou and Moussa (Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall), who, unbeknownst to their relatives, leave Dakar in an attempt to make their dreams come true. These are the same innocent and naïve dreams of any adolescent from any part of the world: become a rap star, get millions of fans and rake in the dosh.

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The film is narrated in linear fashion. Life in their neighbourhood is marked by poverty but is tranquil enough: we are not shown local mafia bosses who extort money from people, and there are no armed raids by soldiers or rebels, which happens in other areas of the continent. The boys talk to someone who “has made the trip”, who duly discourages them, and they ask permission to leave from the con-artist-cum-witch-doctor (Doudou Sagna). They set off at dawn, despite Seydou’s mother (Khady Sy) having categorically forbidden them from doing so: “The path to Europe is strewn with dead bodies.”

Mali, Niger, followed by the endless expanse of the Sahara. Here, the DoP, veteran cinematographer Paolo Carnera, does his best to capture the methods of the smugglers, who steam ahead at top speed, and then the caravan of migrants who limp on over the ridges of the dunes. The main characters soon come to know the brutality of the Libyan police and, even worse, what awaits them at the sorting centre, where the migrants are split up according to their nationality and are tortured to force them to phone home and get their families to send money to buy back their freedom. When the pair are reunited, they are ready to set sail from Zuwara, which in the last few years has become a major departure hub for African migrants who eventually reach the coasts of Lampedusa or Sicily. The people traffickers who organise the journey on a rickety fishing boat entrust the vessel to Seydou himself (“You’re 16 years old; you’re not risking anything”), after providing him with minimal instructions. Europe is right there; all you need to do is keep heading north. On board, there’s a lack of drinking water, and there’s also a pregnant woman, but at the helm is a courageous captain.

Garrone wrote the screenplay with three Italians, Massimo Ceccherini, Massimo Gaudioso and Andrea Tagliaferri, but he availed himself of the collaboration of various African people who told him of their voyages – in particular, Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou, a young Ivorian who fled the famine and the civil war that had been ravaging his country until 2011, and who today works as an intercultural mediator (he speaks 13 languages) in Caserta. The director has stated that he intended to position the camera from the point of view of the migrants, in a sort of reverse shot compared to the images we are accustomed to seeing from our Western viewpoint. But writing a screenplay and directing a film are an exercise in dominant and definitive mediation, so much so that obtaining the “point of view” of someone else – who has lived through a nightmare – seems like a very Western delusion. Garrone has renounced his signature transgressive style, which oozes inventiveness as he probes the complexity of human nature, but nevertheless maintains his usual formal rigour. In this way, he has come up with a sort of epic, albeit dazzling, vision that is perhaps intended for a younger audience, which does not convey the full horror of reality. Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou has spoken in old interviews about still more unspeakable violence than that shown in the film, which tends more towards underlining the bravery and the heroism of the two leads.

Io Capitano is an Italian-Belgian co-production staged by Archimede, together with RAI Cinema and Tarantula, Pathé Pictures and Logical Content Ventures. Its international sales have been entrusted to Pathé International.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 06/09/2023: Venice 2023 - Io Capitano

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Matteo Garrone, Ardavan Safaee, Mamadou Kouassi, Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, Paolo Del Brocco, Massimo Ceccherini, Christian Marazziti, Flaure B. B. Kabore, Issaka Sawagodo, Hichem Yacoubi
© 2023 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it