Italy/Belgium/France • Drama • Year: 2023 • Running time: 121 mins
Languages: Wolof • French • Arabic • English
Audience response: 17 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 10 votes
- Very Good’: 5 votes
- ‘Good’: 2 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
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Synopsis:
A Homeric fairy tale that tells the adventurous journey of two young boys, Seydou and Moussa, who leave Dakar to reach Europe. Inspired by actual stories of people’s African routes to Europe, exposing the greed, trauma and corruption driving today’s trade in would-be immigrants
This is a film that, for all its brutal horrors, keeps a kernel of hope and faith in the inherent decency of humankind (or some of it at least)
Wendy Ide: Observer
Director: Matteo Garrone
Pinocchio (2019) • Dogman (2018) • Tale of Tales (2015)
Writers: Matteo Garrone • Massimo Ceccherini • Massimo Gaudioso • Andrea Tagliaferri
Main Cast:
| Seydou Sarr | Seydou |
| Moustapha Fall | Moussa |
| Issaka Sawadogo | Martin |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the Io Capitano pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes).
Film Notes:
Director Garonne’s (Gomorra/2008, Tale of Tales/2015, Dogman/2018) original idea for this film led him to collaborate with Massimo Gaudiosa, Massimo Cecherini and Andrea Tagliaferri to write the script.
Seydou and Moussa, played by nonprofessional acting newcomers, are two teenage cousins living in Dakar, Senegal, who dream of escaping poverty, and so make plans to get to Italy. Although this is fiercely opposed by the local community, especially Seydou’s mother, they steal away in the night and find themselves facing a number of challenging obstacles, to say the least. As refugees in the fabled land of the EU, they hope to ‘go viral’ and make a fortune as music stars, like the people they’re watching on TikTok.
Hope and fantasy coexist closely in the film, despite the gruesome, horrific and graphic experiences the two teenagers face. The better future that tempts them to undergo the perilous journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean may be no more substantial than the mirage of a floating woman of Seydou’s hallucination in the desert.
Part adventure story, part slavery drama, this film ably illustrates the pervasive presence, still, of slavery in the globalised modern world, driven by the age-old forces of geopolitics, the market and greed.