The image being used to promote Io Capitano is certainly a striking one. A young boy in a desert landscape grips the hand of a levitating woman, her robe and headscarf billowing out behind her. It’s one of a sprinkling of magical realist moments Matteo Garrone inserts into his migration drama. But if anything they do the film a disservice, adding to an already pervasive feeling that the edges of this harsh story have been blunted for palatability.
Cousins Seydou and Moussa (Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall) are two ambitious teenagers in Senegal who dream of making a new life in Europe. Having secretly saved up for months, they embark on a perilous journey through Niger into Libya with the intention of making it to Italy. Of course, the naive young men endure intense hardships, both human and natural alike.
As episodic as any road trip movie, Io Capitano seems reluctant to spend too much time in any one place. Perhaps Garrone was keen to avoid accusations of ‘misery porn’ by not subjecting his young protagonists to any particular hardship for a prolonged duration. What this means in practice is that no matter how awful the situation – and a scene in a Libyan prison is particularly harrowing – there’s always a solution around the corner. Too often these involve sheer coincidence or hints of Deus ex Machina. It also makes it confusing to get a grasp on exactly how much time has passed. One gets the sense that Seydou could almost be the floating woman being led by the hand through an impossible journey. It’s not that there isn’t any power in his travails, but that the impact feels significantly lessened.
None of this can be laid at the feet of the two young actors. Both Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall are great as Seydou and Moussa go from youthful bravado and optimism to terrified degradation. In as much as Io Capitano highlights the loss and regaining of hope, the duo capture this perfectly, but their authentic performances are at the service of a slightly disingenuous attempt to tell an ‘important’ story, for want of a better word. Io Capitano has been nominated for Best International Feature Film at the upcoming Oscars and it’s hard to ignore how precision-tooled it feels towards achieving that.
Io Capitano is far from being a terrible film. It’s lusciously shot and it’s easy to will the young men to their destination. But it’s the safest way that this story could be told, even with its surrealist touches added. It just about earns the catharsis that gives the film its title, mainly through the efforts of its earnest young actors, but its culmination feels dishonest. If we know anything about the situation of immigrants in Europe, this would be far from the end of the story.
Screened as part of Glasgow Film Festival 2024