Seydou and Moussa, two Senegalese teenage cousins, leave their hometown Dakar to reach Italy and escape poverty, after consulting a Dakar sorcerer and against the express wish of Seydou's mother and the terrifying advice of local men. The boys transit through Mali equipped with false passports fabricated for $100 by an English speaker at a rest stop. The forgery is discovered by a soldier at the border, but they avoid prison in exchange for money as a bribe. Once in Niger, they pay to join a group crossing the Sahara desert by pickup truck and later on foot with a guide northwards into Libya. On the journey, a man falls out of the truck and is abandoned in the desert. On the walk, a woman collapses from exhaustion; despite Seydou's efforts, she is left behind to die. In a short dreamlike sequence, Seydou gently takes her hand while she floats horizontally above the sand so that they can continue their walk through the Sahara. After entering Libya, rebels intercept the group and shake them down for valuables, taking away Moussa after he attempted to hide his money in his anus. Forlorn, Seydou continues with the group. The trip is revealed to be a ruse; they are led directly into a smuggler-run prison and, under threat of torture and slavery, are extorted for relatives' contact information in pursuit of ransom money. Rather than reveal his situation to his family, Seydou allows himself to be subjected to torture. In a dream, the Dakar sorcerer helps Seydou to return home led by a flying demon to view his mother in her bed in Dakar. The next day, the fatherly and fellow French-speaking inmate Martin pulls Seydou along to a slave auction, where the representative of a wealthy estate purchases them as bricklayers.
At the remote estate, Martin and Seydou are put to work building a new fence and a fountain. Despite their servitude, they are treated relatively well and bond on a personal level, with Martin and Seydou sharing stories of their families and hopes for their futures. Having completed their tasks well, the estate's patriarch releases Martin and Seydou and pays for their transport to Tripoli. On arrival, the two sorrowfully separate as Martin chooses to continue his journey towards Naples, while Seydou remains in Tripoli to search the Senegalese enclaves for Moussa, taking up a construction job for a high-rise building in the meantime. After some time, Seydou finally locates Moussa, who managed to escape from jail but was shot in the leg in the process. Moussa's leg is temporarily stabilized, but his urgent need for advanced medical care puts further pressure on them to resume the journey to Europe. Seydou turns to a fixer, Ahmed, who organizes the crossings in the Mediterranean Sea.
Not having enough money, Seydou is offered only one option: he will have to drive the boat himself. Ahmed instructs Seydou on how to steer the vessel and navigate with a compass northwards from Tripoli to Sicily. Despite a grueling journey with fights among the passengers and the birth of a baby onboard, Seydou manages to pilot the boat and all of the passengers safely in sight of the shores of Sicily; mere miles offshore from Sicily, the boat is intercepted by an Italian coast guard helicopter. Despite the jubilation of Seydou - he keeps shouting "Io capitano!" (Italian for I (am) the captain) to the helicopter above - and the boat's passengers, they now face an uncertain future at the hands of the Italian government, which is not shown.
The film was produced by Archimede, Rai Cinema, Tarantula, Pathé and Logical Content Ventures, in coproduction with RTBF, VOO-BE TV, Proximus and Shelter Prod, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Film and Audiovisual Centre of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, taxshelter.be, ING, and the tax shelter of the Belgian federal government, and the participation of Canal+, Ciné+ and Wallimage (Wallonia).[12][13] The project had a budget of approximately €11.2 million.[14]
The castings, under the direction of Henri-Didier Njikam, took place on the African continent, and features Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, originally from Dakar, at ages 17 and 18, respectively.[15]Principal photography began in Dakar, Senegal. The production, which lasted for 13 weeks, also took place in Morocco and Italy.[7][16] The film was shot in sequence, beginning with two and a half weeks in Senegal and four weeks in the desert.[17] The desert locations included the souk of Errachidia, the dunes of Merzouga and the pre-desert zones outside of Ouarzazate.[18] Filming continued in Casablanca, which served as a stand-in for Tripoli and where the detention centres scenes were shot. Filming then moved to the sea with a fishing boat for three weeks. The final parts of the film were shot off the coast of Marsala, Sicily.[17]
Release
Io capitano was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 80th Venice International Film Festival,[19] where it had its world premiere on 6 September 2023,[1] and received a 13-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening.[20] World sales are handled by Pathé International. The film was theatrically released in Italy on 7 September 2023 by 01 Distribution.[10] Pathé distributed the film in France on 3 January 2024.[21] Paradiso Films handled the theatrical release in Belgium on 10 January 2024.[22] It was also released by Cohen Media Group in the United States on 23 February 2024.[23]
A special screening of the film took place at the Vatican on 14 September 2023. Garrone and the cast of the film were in attendance, where they were granted an audience with Pope Francis at his Domus Sanctae Marthae residence.[24][25]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 108 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "A journey toward hope, Io Capitano perambulates through the ravishing Saharan landscape encountering the most sublime and debased corners of humanity".[26]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 79 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable".[27]
Guy Lodge of Variety reflected on the theme of the film by reporting that, compared to other European film projects dealing with African emigration to Europe, it is seen "not as its setting but as a near-mythic objective". Lodge states that the director produced his "most robust, purely satisfying" work in Io capitano, and that although the film in some scenes presents "Western aesthetic and narrative instincts," it is "hard not to be caught up in the film's grand, honestly felt emotional sweep" supported by the skill of actor Seydou Sarr.[28] Leslie Felperin, reviewing the film for The Hollywood Reporter, wrote that despite the presence of "dazzling" landscapes, the film "always keeps the focus on the humans," sensing a "porousness here between the everyday world and the spiritual dimension, a haziness that's often a feature in West African cinema," due to the fact that "Garrone keeps us guessing right up until the very last moment of the film".[29]Deadline Hollywood journalist Damon Wise has described the cinematic technique adopted for the film as "flawless," writing that cinematographer Paolo Carnera was able to convey a "stunning, immersive immediacy". Wise also says that the film's "biggest achievement" was the cast of actors who are able to make the project "authentic at every step of its audacious journey".[30]
For Italian film critic Mattia Pasquini of Ciak gave the film four stars out of five, writing that the most important factor is the "intellectual and design honesty" in which the director makes "the choice to limit his authorship." The journalist reported that although the film sidesteped some "dramatic possibilities" and presents a "mechanical" narrative in some scenes, the end result is constituted of "legitimate and uncritical choices that make the film ideologically unassailable."[31] Davide Turrini of Il Fatto Quotidiano stated that in the film "the immediate structural reference is to the Odyssey" in which "the fragile and soft innocence of the two protagonists" are "prevented from being a community of solidarity."[32]Paolo Mereghetti, reviewing the film for Corriere della Sera, wrote that the film is able to "always remain at protagonist height, identifying with their gaze, avoiding any preachy attitude" transfiguring "tragedy through the power of fantasy and fable."[33]
