Directed with an expansive sense of scope by Matteo Garrone, Io Capitano tells an immigrant story on a massive scale. In a sense, its story is quite simple. He follows one young Senegalese immigrant from leaving his village, all the way through northern Africa and across the Mediterranean into Europe. Each step provides a unique set of challenges, and some stretches of the film can be difficult to watch. What keeps it from mere “misery porn” is Garrone’s top-tier production values, and the aching performance of his hero. If the film ultimately falls short, a storytelling choice that hinges on Western guilt rather than the logic of its premise, it is because what happened up until that point is so stirring.
Garrone, a stalwart of modern Italian cinema, has dazzled international audiences with films like Gomorra and Reality. He has primarily shot films in Italy, but in Senegal where the film begins, he brings the same vivacious energy from his earlier work. We see it in an early scene where Seydou (Seydou Sarr) joins his village for a dance ceremony. The camera captures a real sense of community and joy, and yet Seydou dreams beyond his village. Along with his cousin Moussa (Moustapha Fall), Seydou dreams of traveling to Europe where he can begin a music career. Elders in the village caution him, noting the danger of the journey, and yet the pair leave in secret anyway. Seydou is only 16 years old, and it can be wrenching to see how naivete means he cannot see how he’s being manipulated or duped.
The journey starts with a series of bribes and a flimsy network of smugglers, so the first real challenge is where Seydou crosses the Sahara Desert. Garrone and his cinematographer Paolo Carnera recall Lawrence of Arabia in how they capture the beauty – and brutalizing vastness – of the desert. There are shots where we see Seydou and others walk along across the dunes, and there is no sense their tireless march will lead anywhere. The journey ends with Seydou and Moussa separated, and Seydou finally confronts the reality of his journey at its most brutal: a Libyan prison where criminals demand a ransom before he and any other migrants can be freed. Garrone depicts torture and unspeakable conditions, including a tough scene where Seydou hangs from the ceiling in a stress position, and it is only through dumb luck that Seydou leaves the prison.
Garrone is careful not to lean into pure exploitation. He knows that his material is tough, and dwelling on the violence would get his audience to disengage from the material. Io Capitano, co-written by Garrone along with three others, also takes pity on Seydou (and the audience by extension) through vignettes of fantasy. Seydou has dreams about the mother he abandoned, a connection that at first makes him an almost pathetic creature, then is his greatest source of strength. Through his mother, a no-nonsense woman who was exactly right when she warned her son about traveling to Europe, Seydou preserves a sense of decency that forces him to be an unlikely, natural leader.
Io Capitano includes a cast of unknown actors, all of whom are convincing, but Sarr is the real standout. His eyes are deeply expressive, and there is zero artifice to the performance. The most important shots in the film are when Garrone lingers on Sarr, letting us see the turmoil that stirs within him, and how he finds wisdom on the other side. That strength is also crucial to the film’s climax, the boat journey from Tripoli into Italy. Seydou convinces the smuggler to let him on the boat, with one condition: Seydou must also navigate the vessel through the sea (the smuggler figures Seydou will not face severe consequences if he is caught, since he is minor). After Seydou agrees, there is a moment where the enormity of the responsibility dawns on him, and his face drops in terror. That look and feeling is instantly recognizable to anyone who has experienced it, and points to how – even though he is not African – Garrone is a good fit for this material. His other key film Gomorrah, a mob story set in Naples, is also about youths who are overwhelmed by corrupt, amoral men they have no choice but to obey.
By mixing a single-minded goal with dangerous obstacles, Garrone’s film has the structure and payoff of a fairy tale. Like Pinocchio or David, the robot from Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence, Seydou sets into a world for which he is not prepared. But we are talking about an actual boy, not a supernatural facsimile of one, and this story demands realism that Garrone ultimately declines to pursue. Seydou succeeds in reaching Europe, his face curdled by weary triumph, and then the camera stays there. Garrone knows what awaits him in Europe, an indifferent bureaucracy and no real future, so he forces his audience to imagine the worst-case scenario. Putting that image in our minds, not showing it, relies on liberal guilt and not the honesty his film pursued up to that point. It is a single wrong note in an otherwise compelling film, and while it ultimately stops Io Capitano from reaching greatness, at least the decision makes sense in a tragic way. Like the fantasy sequences about his mother, Garrone looks at Seydou and cannot bring to tell him the truth, and instead opts to leave him on a lie borne out of pity.
Photo courtesy of Cohen Media Group
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