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On the finish of “Io Capitano” (“I Captain”), Matteo Garrone’s harrowing contender for greatest worldwide movie at subsequent month’s Academy Awards, a map tracks the journey taken by the movie’s two teenage protagonists: over 3,500 miles from Dakar, Senegal, to Sicily, by way of the scorching Nigerien desert, horrific Libyan prisons and a nerve-racking Mediterranean crossing aboard a rickety vessel.
Such perilous voyages, taken annually by numerous Africans searching for a brand new life in Europe, is “one of many nice dramas of our occasions,” Garrone mentioned in a latest interview, and “Io Capitano” is framed as an epic, modern-day Odyssey, with protagonists no much less valiant than Homer’s hero.
“It’s a journey that’s an archetype in order that anybody can determine with it,” mentioned Garrone, who’s greatest recognized to worldwide audiences for the hyper-realistic 2008 drama “Gomorrah” and his darkish and fantastical “Pinocchio” (2019).
“Io Capitano” can be, he mentioned, a “doc of up to date historical past.” This month alone, over 2,000 individuals reached European shores by crossing the Mediterranean, whereas at the very least 74 died, bringing the quantity of people that have gone lacking in that sea within the final decade to greater than 29,000, in response to the Worldwide Group for Migration, a United Nations company.
Many Europeans study of those landings, and deaths, from brief information segments, usually accompanied by clips of lawmakers pledging to cease unlawful migration. Garrone’s movie, which gained the Silver Lion for greatest directing eventually yr’s Venice Movie Competition, goes past the statistics with a plot primarily based on tales of actual individuals crossing the Mediterranean.
Garrone, who lives in Rome, mentioned he had been impressed to jot down “Io Capitano” a number of years in the past after visiting a Sicilian heart that assists minors and listening to the story of Fofana Amara, a person from Guinea who was solely 15 when — unable to swim and with no nautical expertise — traffickers in Libya compelled him to pilot a dilapidated ship carrying 250 individuals to the Sicilian port of Augusta.
Because the vessel neared Sicily, Amara recalled, a helicopter handed overhead and he started screaming to get its consideration. After being rescued, he was arrested because the ship’s captain and spent two months in jail earlier than being launched, on condition that he was a minor. He was given two years on parole.
Listening to Amara’s story, Garrone mentioned, he “instantly considered Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Joseph Conrad.”
Within the movie, Amara’s story is informed by means of the character of Seydou, who leaves Senegal along with his cousin Moussa, pushed by youthful enthusiasm and the prospect of musical fame in Europe. After a collection of calamities and setbacks, Seydou is pressured to captain a ship of migrants throughout the tough Mediterranean, regardless of by no means having sailed earlier than.
In a latest interview, Amara mentioned he hoped the movie would assist viewers “perceive what we undergo.” It’s now been 10 years since Amara made his journey, and he mentioned it was painful to see such harmful, and sometimes deadly, crossings nonetheless being made, and nonetheless being met with basic indifference from the European public.
“Folks nonetheless come, individuals die, some make it, others don’t, some we don’t know their destiny,” mentioned Amara, who later skilled as a skipper at a nautical academy after which moved to Belgium, the place is ready for his asylum request to be evaluated.
To write down the script, Garrone spoke to dozens of others who had additionally made the Mediterranean crossing, together with Mamadou Kouassi, whose story grew to become one other of the movie’s principal narrative sources. Practically 20 years in the past, Kouassi left the Ivory Coast at age 19 and launched into a traumatic three-year odyssey by means of deserts, Libyan camps and a sea crossing through which three fellow passengers died.
“I name myself a survivor,” he mentioned in an interview.
Talking to audiences whereas selling “Io Capitano,” Kouassi famous that folks had been moved to tears by the movie. “I say it’s not solely my story, however the story of many individuals who endure that tragedy to come back to Europe,” he mentioned within the interview, including that some issues he had witnessed had been too grotesque to incorporate within the script.
Kouassi now works in a metropolis close to Naples as a cultural mediator, serving to newcomers from Africa and elsewhere navigate the ins and outs of a continent that’s typically unwelcoming to them.
“It’s human to wish to journey,” Kouassi mentioned. “Folks had been made to maneuver — nobody can cease it. It’s like the ocean: You may’t cease water from flowing.” That has specific resonance in Africa, the continent that has the world’s youngest inhabitants, with 70 p.c of sub-Saharan Africa below the age of 30.
Garrone mentioned that he hadn’t got down to make a political movie, however that “Io Capitano” “inevitably grew to become political” because it spoke to the idea that everybody ought to have the correct to “freely transfer, to find, to expertise new worlds.” It was necessary for the director that the movie’s protagonists aren’t leaving residence due to battle, famine or local weather change, however as an alternative go within the hope of a greater future.
“Io Capitano” was shot in Senegal, Morocco and Sicily in 2022, and migrants labored on the crew and as extras, letting Garrone know after they felt the story didn’t ring true. “We all know that cinema is a collective artwork kind,” Garrone mentioned. “On this case it’s much more, as a result of we actually made it collectively.”
The director stored the movie’s Senegalese lead actors, Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, at midnight about their characters’ future. He shot chronologically, and so they weren’t given an advance script. “I needed them to take care of a relentless strain with out figuring out whether or not or not they’d arrive in Italy,” he mentioned.
For the actors, who had been each youngsters throughout filming, it’s been a life-changing expertise.
Fall mentioned that whereas he hadn’t recognized anybody who made the Mediterranean crossing, he very a lot felt the “duty to be the voice of those that don’t have one,” he mentioned. “It wasn’t straightforward.” Since taking pictures began, he has amassed over 1,000,000 followers on TikTok, lots of whom gush over his sense of favor. “My dream is to see my very own designs on the streets in the future,” he added.
Sarr, who gained an award for greatest younger actor eventually yr’s Venice Movie Competition, mentioned that “Io Capitano” was “necessary for Africa, and for Senegal.” Though he hopes to proceed appearing, he mentioned that, most of all, he needed to grow to be knowledgeable soccer participant.
Requested whether or not he hoped to pursue these desires in Europe, he instantly responded: “Oh, sure.”
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