| Extras | Lone Star |
THE BOY IN THE BOAT
IO CAPITANO Matteo Garrone turns to a teen from Senegal for the ultimate hero origin story.
Gommorah and Pinocchio director Matteo Garrone’s films were previously confined to Italy’s shores, but in his latest, Io Capitano, Sicily is the light at the end of a dark and dangerous tunnel. Teenager Seydou (Seydou Sarr) makes the journey there from Dakar, but faces torture, starvation, and enslavement before he even reaches the sea crossing. It’s a tough but radically beautiful watch, filled with magic, agony and triumph. But sadly, as director Garrone tells Teasers, ‘the reality is even worse. Sometimes, it’s difficult to recreate things that are so violent they can look unbelievable. So this is an invocation of that violence rather than a representation.’
In 2023, nearly 3,000 people are estimated to have died attempting the crossing from north Africa to Europe (Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, reportedly once said she’d ‘repatriate migrants back to their countries and then sink the boats that rescued them’).
Garrone counters that narrative with ‘the classic journey of a hero fighting against the system’. On a trip to Sicily over a decade ago, he met Mamadou Kouassi, who, aged 15, steered a boat of 250 refugees across the Mediterranean. Garrone emphasises: ‘He’d never driven a boat! He didn’t even know how to swim, and he saved all their lives.’ Kouassi worked as script consultant on the film and is now settled near Naples. Garrone points him out, smiling in a sharp suit while checking in to the chic London hotel where the team is staying. It’s hard not to shed a tear seeing a real-life hero get a happy ending.
‘It’s difficult to recreate things that are so violent’
MATTEO GARRONE
Our hero’s story has been a critical and commercial success in Italy (‘It’s my most popular movie!’) and is hotly tipped for awards success. But Garrone was most overjoyed at the Venice Film Festival (where he won Best Director) watching Sarr, a shy teenager who had never acted before, win Best New Actor. ‘I’m conscious of how much I owe him, so I was very, very happy. He didn’t want to go to the casting, but like in the movie, his mother is blind and he lost his father, so he felt the responsibility to be the man of the family and accepted the role.’
Garrone can relate to that reluctance, having spent years unsure whether he was the right person to tell this story. ‘I’m Italian and bourgeois. And I was afraid to exploit the subject matter and show the “poor migrant” from the point of view of the privileged,’ the director says, adding: ‘The movie chose me and the only way to not be crucified was to make the movie honest. I will die, and the movie will remain. I would prefer the opposite! But then the problem of the bourgeois Italian man will be in the past. No one will care about that if the movie is good.’
IO CAPITANO OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 5 APRIL.