IO CAPITANO
(director/writer: Matteo Garrone; screenwriters: Massimo Gaudioso, Massimo Ceccherini, Andrea Tagliaferri; cinematographer: Paolo Carnera; editor: Marco Spoletini; music: Andrea Farri; cast: Seydou Sarr (Seydou), Moustapha Fall (Moussa), Ndeye Khady Sy (Seydou’s mom), Issaka Sawadogo (Martin), Hichem Yacoubi (Ahmed), Doodou Sagna (Charlatan); Runtime: 122; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Matteo Garrone, Paolo Del Brocco; Cohen Media Group/Pathe Films; 2023-Italy, Belgium, France-in Wolof, French and Arabic with English subtitles)
“The inexperienced thespian kid leads give commanding performances.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone (“Dogman”/”Gomorrah”) directs this earnest political film that eschews politics, telling instead a fairy-tale story about migrants from West Africa fleeing to Europe to realize their dreams of escaping poverty and becoming famous musicians in the West. But they find themselves confronting uncomfortable truths about moving to a new country as unwanted refugees, and the pic becomes a grim adventure story and a modern-day slavery tale.
Garrone co-scripts it with Massimo Gaudioso, Massimo Ceccherini, and Andrea Tagliaferri.
Two inseparable, naive, Senegalese teen cousins, from Dakar, Seydou (Seydou Sarr, a musician) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall, a non-professional actor), journey to Europe hoping to experience a better life. The boys ignore the warnings of caution from Seydou’s mom (Ndeye Khady Sy), who lets them know their trip won’t be a picnic and they shouldn’t trust strangers.
Their initial optimism is curbed when realizing they don’t have enough money for the essentials or for the necessity of buying such things as fake passports. They also must take an arduous walk across the desert to reach the Mediterranean Sea and then take a boat from Libya to an unwelcoming Italy.
It’s a mood film telling how the refugees are badly mistreated on their journey, whereby the inexperienced thespian kid leads give commanding performances as they lose their sweet innocence on their desperate journey and, in the end, it’s not determined if their dreams will ever come through in a world where greed and hardship are the norms for the newcomers of color.
The title is derived from the film’s final moments, when Seydou is forced to pilot the overcrowded boat that takes his fellow travelers from Tripoli to Sicily and is mockingly made captain. The Libyan mafiosi force him to do so because they need a minor to blame for the smuggling operation in case things go wrong.
It played at the Venice Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 6/28/2024 GRADE: B