Io Capitano (15)

Italy | 2024 | 121’ | TBC | Matteo Garrone | Wolof, French and Arabic with English subtitles | Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall

Two Senegalese teenagers, Seydou and Moussa leave Dakar for Italy. On a journey neither of the boys could have anticipated, they treon an odyssey from West Africa to the Mediterranean, experiencing the dangers and the beauty of the desert, the shock of detention centres in Libya, and the perils of the sea in their pursuit of a better. Highly emotional and honestly felt, this is a story of epic scale, but one which doesn’t lose sight of the individual human stakes of the migrant crisis and the intensity of the suffering it propagates, aided by the captivating performances (in particular Seydou Sarr who also contributed to the soundtrack), and a script with contributions from first-hand migrant accounts. This powerful film from Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, Dogman, Tale of Tales) was nominated for Best International Film at this year’s Oscars.