Io Capitano

Director: Matteo Garrone (Italy, Belgium, France). Year of Release: 2023

What looks like a township on the edge of Dakar, Senegal. A teenage boy is woken up by his many younger sisters playing. When he complains, they say he should just go back to sleep. As if that’s likely to happen with their noise. Seydou reluctantly gets up and tells his mother that he’s going to play football with his cousin Moussa. In fact, they are working on a building site to raise money to get away. After counting the money, Seydou buries it in a secret place.

Seydou and Moussa want to leave for Europe, to get some work and send some money back to their family. When Seydou lets their plans slip, his mother is appalled – doesn’t he know about all the dead bodies in the desert and the Mediterranean? And what about all the bodies on European streets? (some critics treated this literally, but I just assumed she meant the homeless). Even the bloke who is arranging travel tickets for them is not convinced, warning them to think again.

But it’s not long before the boys are on their way. The money that they raised does not last very long. As well as the travel tickets (first a bus, then the back of a pick up truck which refuses to stop when someone falls off the back), they need to get fake passports. And when the passports don’t convince the local police (quick tip: if your passport was supposed to have been issued 2 years ago, don’t have your passport photo taken wearing your current clothes), it’s either a bribe or prison.

The boys, and the dozens of people travelling with them, have no guarantee that they’ll come close to their intended destination (Tripoli, and then the boat to Sicily). The truck taking them through the Sahara desert suddenly stops, leaving them to follow a tour guide on foot. Not everyone makes it. When tragedy happens, there are two different pieces of magical realism to show how Seydou is able to cope with the death and misery which accompanies their journey.

Seydou and Moussa make it into Libya, but then they are separated – following the indirect result of an earlier scene in which a seasoned traveller had told them that the only way to avoid having their money confiscated is to stick it up their arse. Moussa is sent to a state prison. Seydou is captured by mafia types who torture him unless he begs his mother for money to release him. They then sell him as slave labour. Fortunately a builder in the prison adopts him and saves his life.

In Tripoli, the pair are reunited but don’t have the money for the boat to Italy, The local traffickers have a solution. If Seydou agrees to captain the boat, they can have two tickets for the price of one. It doesn’t matter that Seydou can’t swim – only that if the boat is raided he should stay as far away as possible from the brig. This is the perfect solution for the smarmy traffickers, who can pocket the money and don’t even need to go anywhere near to the dangerous waters.

Io Capitano’s biggest misstep comes right at the end. I’m not sure whether it’s a plot spoiler to say what doesn’t happen, but if you want to avoid any plot spoilers (1) don’t watch the trailer which gives away way too much information, and (2) skip the next couple of paragraphs. The film ends with the boat entering triumphantly into a Sicilian harbour accompanied by Italian helicopters while Seydou shouts “Io Capitano”, which I guess means “I’m the captain”.

On screen, the helicopters look welcoming. Given the murderous EU Frontex policies and the actual Fascist currently in charge of Italy, the reality would be likely to be much more grim. Maybe we are supposed to assume that Seydou and co will be sent to an abominable internment camp when they come ashore, but it was a deliberate editorial decision to end the film at this moment, pretty much the film’s only moment of hope. If something bad follows, we don’t need to know.

Some have also questioned the decision to have a White European director tell the story of 2 Senegalese kids. For the most part, I think the decision is defensible, especially as – unlike most Western films – director Matteo Garrone does take efforts to show the African experience. Even so, I found the early scene featuring a shaman to be a little patronising – a European view of what African culture must be like – but at least the film is largely respectful of Senegalese culture.

Io Capitano quite rightly shows the African people traffickers who profit from the desperation of refugees. There are also class divisions within African society and not everyone is a victim. But to barely mention any Western complicity serves to reinforce the right wing (and increasingly social democratic) narrative which blames both migrants and traffickers from Africa, while pretending that European governments are doing everything that they can do under impossible conditions.

The only real Western sin showed is one of omission – the Italian coastguards say that they can’t help injured people who are not in their waters, even though one of them is a bleeding pregnant woman. But the responsible authorities – in Malta – are unable to cope. In the real world I don’t doubt that the Italian coastguards would have left Black Africans to die, although if there were any sense of them coming close to the Sicilian shore, gunboats would be deployed.

This is a great shame, as until then, Io Capitano had been a sober depiction of a serious issue. The young actors are great, looking in turns full of youthful swagger and lonely and scared – you know, how 16 year olds are in real life. And at a time when “economic migrants” are being demonised, it’s great that Io Capitano has the courage to humanise people who leave home to look after their nearest and dearest. If only it didn’t make that fatal falter just before the finishing line.