Venice 2023: The Captain
VENICE 2023One of the most debated contemporary social topics – migration to Europe – was the subject of two films presented at the Venice Film Festival this year: Zielona Granica (in English translated as Green Border) by Agnieszka Holland and Io Capitano (The Captain) by Matteo Garrone, winners of the Special Jury Prize and the Silver Lion Award for Best Director respectively. Where Holland denounces the dramatic situation facing people seeking asylum trapped at the border between Poland and Belarus, Garrone chooses instead to take the focus away from Europe for once and to concentrate on the lesser-known journey that takes place across the sea.
Io Capitano follows two young cousins, Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), as they decide to leave their home in Dakar, Senegal and make their way to Europe, where they dream of realising their aspirations. Due to the lack of legal routes into Europe, however, their only hope is to embark on a perilous journey across the desert to reach the shores of Libya and cross the sea to Italy.
In this film, Garrone effectively shifts the typical Western perspective by placing Seydou front and centre in this epic coming-of-age, moving away from a pitiful portrayal of migrants to restore their status as individual human beings with dreams, hopes and aspirations. Seydou and Moussa are not merely victims of fate or circumstance, but young men with the agency to make choices, be they good or bad, and seek their place in a world that does not contemplate them as anything else than someone to fear or pity. Despite its poverty, Dakar is a colourful, vibrant city and family links are strong, in sharp contrast with the loneliness of the desert and the darkness of Libyan prisons further on.
Language also plays an important role in Io Capitano, as the two leads start the journey by speaking their native language, Wolof, rich in emotions and grounded in reality. The dialogue slowly melts into French the further north they travel, the grammar progressively more precise and the human relationships slowly fade into non-existence, until all that is left is a disembodied voice on a radio unable to practically intervene in any way. This is also where the film perhaps shows some weakness, as Europe remains conspicuous in its absence and any critique of the systems established by Western governments that make this type of journey possible and necessary in the first place is lightly suggested rather than explored in any depth.
The practical consequences of these policies and governments’ inactions, though, are sharply felt in what is probably one of the hardest-hitting scenes, coinciding with the final stage of Seydou’s growth. In stemming from. but also maintaining only a light anchor to the current political climate, Io Capitano effectively transcends Seydou and Moussa’s individual story – and those of the many people embarking on a similar journey every day – to represent a universal experience of desire for adventure and following one’s dreams.
This modern fable steeped in African culture and language, going as far as incorporating oneiric elements, provides a fresh and much-needed new take on the theme of migration, going beyond white saviourism and pity to remind viewers of the beauty and complexity of human life and dreams through the eyes of a modern hero.