12 minutes of applause for 'the contemporary Odyssey'.
Venice applauds, gets emotional, pays long applause to I, Captain by Matteo Garrone. Infinite ovations and applause in the Sala Grande, 12 minutes, for the director of Gomorrah and Pinocchio, who returns to the cinema with a story strongly linked to our contemporary reality, that of migrants who cross the desert from Africa, the horror of Libyan torture, the risky journey across the Mediterranean to break through Fortress Europe.
And the two very young Senegalese protagonists, Seydou Sarr, Moussa Fall, actors by chance, never a step away from their country and Mamadou Kouassi from the Ivory Coast who made the journey from his country 15 years ago, with the same ordeal, now lives in Caserta and helped Garrone to make the film even more real, cry in the theater.
There are mothers also in colorful clothes to hold those kids and among the guests Mario Martone applauds with conviction. I, Captain is the film of a day also marked by Origin by Ava DuVernay, the first African-American in competition in the history of the Festival, with a film based on the essay Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson, which has achieved enormous success in the USA since 2020, contributing to changing the approach to the discussion on racism. I, Captain will be in theaters in 203 copies with 01 and could be the Italian candidate for selection for the international Oscar.
“To the Oscars? If they invite me to Los Angeles…” says Garrone who prepared this film for a long time, on a suggestion from many years before when he met a 15 year old boy in the reception centre in Catania who, just like in the film, drove a boat with 250 migrants without having ever driven it before.
Her name is Fofana Amara, she lives in Belgium, she was tracked down by the director and collaborated, but unfortunately due to residence permit issues she was unable to join the people who managed to revive her dramatic adventure this evening. “I tell an ethical story, a yearning for justice, a plan different from politics and its controversies” Garrone stands out by choosing to give names and bodies to migrants who are now statistics to be updated disaster after disaster.
“I wanted to show the whole part of the migrants' journey that is usually unknown, not seen, to change the angle, a sort of reverse shot, pointed from Africa towards Europe and to tell the subjective experience of these young people with all the various states of mind, joy and desperation” Matteo Garrone tells ANSA.
Seydou and Moussa leave Dakar to reach Europe, “an epic journey, a contemporary Odyssey, which I tell from their point of view to try to make the viewer relive this experience. To be able to do this I needed - goes on - of continuous help from those who actually made the journey, from those who survived, both in the writing and filming phases, to try to give this story a truth that is necessary out of respect for all these people and for those who died along the way”.
Are you expecting exploitation?
"The theme I am touching on is an archetype, the journey towards a promised land from a poorer country to a richer one, and we are Italians and we know well what that means."
These two kids, decently poor, who dream of Europe to become famous footballers or rappers, "they are a symbol of their globalized generation, part of a migration that is not only that of fleeing wars and climate catastrophes. 70% of Africans are young – continues to ANSA – and they have a legitimate desire to improve their lives, to be free to move around just as I, as a boy, wanted to go to America. It is a question of justice: why are their European peers allowed to go on holiday to Senegal by plane and they, on the contrary, have to face a journey of hope without knowing if they will arrive alive? There is a question of freedom, freedom of movement and justice and this goes beyond the policy on migrants in Europe”.
Filmed between Casablanca, Dakar and in the sea in front of Marsala, with the soundtrack by Andrea Farri, the screenplay by Massimo Ceccherini, Massimo Gaudioso and Andrea Tagliaferri, Io, Capitano “we hope it is a way to make ourselves understood by our European peers – say Seydou and Moussa, and Mamadou – and that our suffering be seen. The only way to avoid it is to have safe entry channels, without giving more money to Libya and Tunisia that trample on human rights”.
EDITORIAL TEAM
Choose the social channel you want to subscribe to