Venice applauds, gets excited, gives long applause to Io, Capitano by Matteo Garrone. Ovations and endless handclaps in the Sala Grande, 12 minutes, this evening 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 in the Mediterranean to pierce the Fortress Europe. And crying in the room the two young Senegalese protagonists, Seydou Sarr, Moussa Fall, actors by chance, never a step out of their country and Mamadou Kouassi of the Ivory Coast who 15 years ago made the journey from his country, with the same labor, now lives in Caserta and helped Garrone to make the film even more true. There are mothers also with colorful clothes to hold those kids and among the guests applauds Mario Martone convinced.
To learn more about Agenzia ANSA Garrone: 'I tell Europe in the back-field seen by migrants' - Venezia Cinema - Ansa.it Io Capitano, a contemporary Odyssey (ANSA)
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 US since 2020, helping to change the approach to the discussion on racism.
Io, Capitano will be in theaters from tomorrow in 203 copies with 01 and could be the Italian candidate for the selection for the international Oscar. "At the Oscars? If they invite me to Los Angeles.." says Garrone who has been preparing this film for a long time, on a suggestion of many years before when he met a 15-year-old boy in the reception center in Catania who, just like in the film, drove without ever having conducted a boat with 250 migrants before. His name is Fofana Amara, he lives in Belgium, tracked down by the director he collaborated and unfortunately for reasons of residence permit he could not cling this evening to those who managed to revive his dramatic adventure.
"I tell an ethical story, an anxiety for justice, a different plan from politics and its polemics" says Garrone who has chosen to give names and body to migrants who are now statistics to be updated disaster after disaster. "I wanted to show the whole part of the journey of migrants that is usually unknown, not seen, change the angle, a sort of counter-camp, pointed from Africa to Europe and tell in subjective the experience of these young people with all the various moods, joy and despair", says Matteo Garrone to 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 - he continues - continuous help from those who really made the journey, from those who survived, both in the writing phase and in the filming phase, to try to give this story a truth necessary for the respect of all these people and those who died on the way". Do you expect exploitation? "The theme I touch is an archetype, the journey to a promised land from a poorer country to a richer one, and we are Italians know what it means". These two boys, dignified poor, who dream of Europe to become famous footballers or rappers, "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 - he continues to ANSA - and have the legitimate desire to improve their lives, to be free to move as I wanted to go to America as a boy. It is a matter of justice: why are their European peers allowed to go on holiday to Senegal by plane and they instead have to face a journey of hope without knowing if they will arrive alive? There is an issue 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 we see our suffering.
The only way to avoid them is to have safe channels of entry, without giving money to Libya and Tunisia who trample on human rights."
All rights reserved © Copyright ANSA