Escape drama: “I Capitano” in the cinema: He wanted to give autographs to the white people

When we think of African refugees, we usually have images of overcrowded boats and reception camps in our minds; linguistic images such as the mass grave in the Mediterranean have become so common in everyday language that they no longer even send a shiver down our spines. »For “I Capitano” I decided to take the opposite perspective to classic media reporting. I wanted to tell a story from the perspective of the migrants who have to fear for their lives on their adventurous journey,” explains director Matteo Garrone (“Dogman”, “Gommorha”) about his new film, which has been in German-speaking cinemas since Thursday can be seen and was one of five films nominated in the “Best International Film” category at this year’s Oscars.

In “I Capitano” Garrone shows the escape of two minors from Senegal from the idea to the destination. He stages the story as an adventure film and tells it very stringently from the perspective of his protagonist, 16-year-old Seydou (Seydou Sarr). He and his cousin Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who is the same age, first plan a trip to Europe, save some money that they earn from unskilled work, and we watch them imagine their future in Europe as rap stars, the »the Giving autographs to white people. The camera shows close-ups of the two’s faces, showing their anticipation, their naivety and soon, especially in Seydou’s features, their fear and uncertainty as to whether this is the right decision. Seydou also has a bad conscience towards his mother, who has strictly forbidden him from the “trip” and tells him that he will help her more if he stays with her.

So Garrone first takes some time to at least roughly illuminate Seydou’s living conditions in Dakar, where the two boys live. We see a family with many children who have to sleep crowded together on the floor, and a mother who has to look after the family alone because the father is dead, as Seydou later explains. “Look where the children sleep, the house is dilapidated and unsafe,” says Seydou as he explains to his mother why he wants to go to Europe. “I want to leave, I want to become someone, I want to help you.” The film shows the contradictions of these young people’s motivations. On the one hand, they know about the dangers and uncertainties that escape entails, but on the other hand, we are dealing with young people who have dreams and do not want to give them up easily.

So Seydou and Moussa set off for Libya, buy false passports, bribe border guards, are exempt from rackets, and soon their savings are gone. They are separated and end up in different prisons. Because Seydou does not want to reveal his mother’s phone number, as demanded by the gangsters who are holding him and hundreds of other refugees captive because they want to extort money from the families, he is tortured and ultimately sold to a wealthy Libyan along with an older inmate. The two are supposed to first build a wall and then a fountain on his property. In return he releases them and even finances their onward journey to Tripoli.

Garrone primarily stages the escape adventure of a young African. The camera always stays on Seydou; we only learn about the fates of all the other characters through stories. Seydou is an unalloyed hero, he is helpful, friendly, and tries to provide water to a woman who is exhausted on the footpath through the Sahara and to get her up again. Nothing about Seydou is questionable or amoral; Garrone presents us with a figure of identification and thus binds the emotions of the viewer to her.

What we are shown, by the way, are people from the global south, here in Africa, who are forced to fight over the remnants of the capitalist world system’s value production and in doing so use naked force to squeeze every last penny from each other. However, by simply dividing the actors into good and bad without making any further distinctions, Garrone misses the connection between capitalist value production and the failed states that the competition between states leaves behind and whose failure ultimately evokes the lawless spaces that are then used by the rackets . The fact that Europe is rich and sub-Saharan Africa is poor seems like a law of nature, the bad guys are the torturers and prison guards in Libya, and the real responsibilities for the blatantly unequal distribution of the social wealth produced worldwide remain ignored.

Nevertheless, “I Capitano” is not apolitical. In his film, Gatteo shows how the experience of flight shapes people who are often very young, in this case minors. Anyone who has ever worked with underage refugees is probably familiar with the phenomenon that many of them seem more mature, more grown-up and older than they are and look. Gatteo makes it clear why this is: Anyone who undertakes such an escape, in which people are often considered illegal immigrants in transit countries and are therefore disenfranchised and still at the mercy of the last crook, will see their view of the world and themselves change through their martyrdom , the experiences with death, dying and one’s own fear of death – and through the confrontation with the need to take responsibility for complete strangers. “I Capitano” energetically points out what it means for those affected to declare them “illegals” and thus disenfranchise them.

Seydou ends up having to steer one of the overcrowded boats towards Sicily as a 16-year-old captain who can’t even swim.

“I Capitano”: Italy, Belgium 2023. Director and script: Matteo Garrone. With: Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall. 121 min. Now in cinemas.