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It’s Matteo Garrone’s day at the Venice Film Festival: “Io Capitano” is the fifth Italian film presented in competition and was one of the most awaited titles of the entire event.
At the center of the plot is the adventurous journey of Seydou and Moussa, two young men who leave Dakar to reach Europe. They will experience a real contemporary odyssey through the pitfalls of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea.
Four years after “Pinocchio”, Garrone returns behind the camera to sign a feature film that abandons those fantasy atmospheres (also present in “The Tale of Tales” of 2015) and re-embraces that typical realism of his early works: from “Terra di half” to “Gomorrah”, passing through “The Embalmer”.
Garrone said that to make the film they started from the real testimonies of those who have lived a similar experience, trying to tell the journey from their angle in a sort of reverse shot with respect to the images we are used to seeing from our western perspective. And this is perhaps the most important quality of an operation that tries to offer an “African gaze” on the tragedy of migration, not sparing particularly harsh images, especially in the long central part in which the protagonist ends up in the detention center.
Despite the general brutality, “Io Capitano” is also a film of hope, effective in conveying reflections of strong humanity.
Dreamlike moments of great poetry
Although the general design is solid but without great flashes, there are a couple of dreamlike moments of great poetic force, capable of making us detach for a few moments from the ferocious realism present right from the start. Written by the director together with Massimo Gaudioso and Massimo Ceccherini , “Io Capitano” is a film that could have been even more incisive and engaging, avoiding some drop in pace during the narration, but the overall result is still clearly positive and is yet another demonstration of Garrone’s great talent. In addition to being very good in the movements of the camera and in the choice of lights and colors, the director is also excellent in directing the actors and in framing the faces and bodies of the characters on stage in the best possible way. The result is a film to be seen and shown even in schools: it’s out this week and it’s definitely worth going to the cinema.