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A Reverse Shot of Migratory Narratives in Matteo Garrone’s “Io Capitano” (2022)

By Said Chemlal

In his film Io Capitano (I’m the Captain, 2022), Matteo Garrone inverts popular narratives about illegal immigration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, both Maghrebi and European. Unlike the common narratives, he brings to the fore the perspective of ‘illegal’ immigrants themselves, who become active participants in the film, rather than mere objects of the camera. The protagonists participate in weaving the narrative and, more importantly, (re)narrating their traumatic lived experiences; hence, they are given a voice to tell their stories. The film also differs from the common plots about clandestine and risky movements from Africa to Europe when it comes to representation. That is, it introduces the migrant subjects as individual subjectivities, whose trajectories are familiar to the audience.

An Italian, Belgian, and French co-production, I’m the Captain is about the journey of two young Senegalese men: Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who leave Dakar heading to Italy. Due to harsh social conditions at home, the two heroes decide to emigrate against their parents’ will. They take the risk of the adventure, though they are cautioned against its unanticipated costs by Seydou’s mother and Sisko, a mediator between candidates and smugglers. Seydou and Moussa make it to Mali, Niger, and finally Libya. During the journey, they witness hardships of all kinds, including long treks in the desert, robbery, and even slavery. After being separated for years by captors in the desert, they meet again in Tripoli, where Seydou suffered torture in mafia prisons before being sold as a slave. As they do not have enough money to cross the Mediterranean, the only option left for them is that Seydou will pilot a boat himself. After a prolonged journey, they unexpectedly and safely reach the coastline of Sicily, Italy.

I’m the Captain has been widely nominated for various awards and has won more than twenty-five of them to date. Shot in a documentary-like style through which the camera takes an objective point of view, the film is a true-to-life fictional work, putting into practice, or better re-staging, some parts of the real-life stories of “people on the move.” While writing his script, Garrone consulted Mamadou Kouassi, an Ivorian immigrant, who himself went through most of the hardships dramatized in the film. Instead of a panoptic Eurocentric vision[1] of illegal immigration, Garrone lends his ears, script, and lens to the stories of real subjects. By highlighting the perspective of the immigrants, the film, unlike common European Media coverage, encourages the spectators to sympathize with the characters. Like a fly on the wall, Garrone’s ‘observing camera’ follows Seydou and Moussa from the outset till the end, without giving the impression of any intervention.

The Sahara desert beneath a blue sky.
Sahara Desert. Photo by Andrzej Kryszpiniuk via unsplash.com.

Matteo Garrone explains that the cast on the set, who are real immigrants, have been part of the film project since the beginning of writing the script. He acknowledges their contribution by stating that he had the privilege of working with them. “It’s a movie that we ‎have done together,” Garrone (2024) discloses, “I would say that they were a sort of co-director [sic] of the ‎movie, I mean, sometimes they help me to create the scene because they already ‎lived that experience.” When presented with an Italian nomination for the Oscar in 2023, the filmmaker clarified that in I’m the Captain, there certainly is “a lot of Italy but also a lot of Africa” (Rothe, 2023).‎ The immigrants have their say in the development of the narrative, as they help the film director to visualize the details of their journey.

Unlike some other European film productions, such as Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma (2011), Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea (2015), Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare, par-delà Lampedusa (Fire at Sea, 2016), and Paula Palacios’ Cartas Mojadas (Drowning Letters, 2020), I’m the Captain sounds more realistic. The filmmaker tries to be authentic “for the respect of the people that made ‎this journey, for the respect of the people that died on this journey, and for the ‎help of the people that will see this movie, especially in Africa and, maybe, will be ‎aware of the risk that is going on” (Garrone 2024). Garrone steps outside his metropolitan comfort zone and adopts a new perspective that is uncommon to mainstream European migratory narratives.

Instead of reproducing a migratory narrative with a perspective from the north of the Mediterranean, Garrone traverses the sea to look at ‘illegal’ immigration from the other side. He, in a way, embraces a spirit of adventure himself when presenting an “anti-Eurocentric vision” as far as clandestine immigration is concerned. I’m the Captain is a “reverse shot,” to borrow Garrone’s words (qtd. in Oltermann, 2023); it offers the spectators a close look at what is happening on the other side of the Mediterranean basin through the lead of his main protagonists. He wants to “give visual form to a ‎part of the journey that we don’t see; that’s what push [sic] us to make this movie” (Garrone, 2024). His film distances itself from ubiquitous European narratives, be they of cinema or media, which usually bring into focus the last part of the journey, when the boats arrive in Sicily, if they succeed, of course‎. I’m the Captain stands as an exception to the overwhelming majority of mobility narratives, which are “narrated by European voices, rather than by migrants themselves” (Scarabicchi, 2023). Unlike such perspectives, Garrone (2024) wants the audience to see ‎the journey from the point of view of the immigrants. He, therefore, dissociates himself from the omnipresent film representations, which deny the immigrants’ agency, as exemplified in highlighting the migrant subject’s point of view, which directs both the narrative and the spectators’ perception.

Instead of claiming to be the sole creator of the film, Garrone confesses that he has been a sort of intermediary between the real subjects and the audience. A kind of fruitful cooperation has been going on between him and the characters during the scriptwriting and shooting of the film project, which took the filmmaker eight years to achieve. I’m the Captain speaks volumes about the reality of the sub-Saharan emigrants. In his attempt to humanize these “moving bodies” as individual human beings, the film highlights the subjectivity of its protagonists, whose origins, names, and identities are all recognized. In his comment on European media representations, especially Italian, Garrone remarks: ‎“What was really important was to show a part of the journey that we usually don’t see. We know about people dying in the desert, but we usually only know about numbers. ‎Behind these numbers, there are human beings very much like us” (qtd. in Metz, 2023).

I’m the Captain indirectly invites audiences in Europe to have a fresh look at the issue of illegal immigration, without blinkers. It is, for Garrone, not “a film that gives an answer, but one that gives the audience an experience” (qtd. in AFP, 2024). Not only is it an experience, but it is a call for action. The film director uncovers the traumatic experiences of clandestine emigrants before they reach their destination/‘paradise’. This perspective opens up the horizon of political action beyond what Matthew Herbert (2016) termed “the securitised approach,” which lies in the lack of opportunities for a sustainable life in many societies south of the Mediterranean. I’m the Captain suggests that empathy with the immigrants and their often saddening trajectories––rather than investing in security: having more fences, guards and surveillance devices––may promise to lead to more humane and sustainable policies. By introducing the socio-cultural and political milieus of the immigrants to the European audiences, the film puts Europe’s ‘hospitality’ and ‘humanity’ in question.

Filmed in Senegal, Morocco, and Italy over more than eight weeks, I’m the Captain follows Seydou and Moussa, who are psychologically and emotionally not yet mature enough to get exposed to unexpected scenes of theft, death, torture, and slavery. Like in Carpignano’s Mediterranea (2015), the immigrants are robbed by armed mafias, with which no trick works; following the advice of a candidate, Moussa hides his money in his bottom, but to no effect. The naïve pair faces all sorts of troubles; they have to walk for weeks, as they are left to rot in the searing desert. The smugglers, breaking their promises, offer old pick-up cars, whose drivers will not stop in case someone falls, as occurs in one scene.

The mafia members, with the help of some sub-Saharan Africans who work as translators, ask the immigrants to provide, if they want to be released, a phone number, which is used to demand ransom from families at home. Those who provide no number, like Seydou, will witness harsh kinds of torture before they are sold as slaves. Overnight, Seydou becomes the slave of the twenty-first century. He and Martin, a sympathizing companion, are bought by a well-to-do Libyan man, who forces them to build a thick wall and a fountain. Fortunately, the villa owner frees them when they have finished their tasks and pays for their trip to Tripoli. Having developed strong bonds while in slavery, Seydou says goodbye to Martin, who dreams of building fountains in Naples, Italy. Seydou keeps looking for his cousin in Tripoli and eventually finds him. Injured when he flees from a mafia prison, Moussa needs immediate medical treatment. That is why they have to urgently embark on their journey to Europe.

I’m the Captain subverts the conventional visual narratives on the journeys of undocumented emigrants from Africa to Europe and, in my view, is a good example of a decolonial narrative. By presenting the two young men as leading characters of the narrative and subjects of the camera, not its objects, the immigrants are no longer mere moving bodies but human beings with their own voice. The film aspires to sensitise both Europeans and Africans to the dangers of migrant journeys, and therefore push them to seriously think of possible solutions and alternatives. For sure, the future African candidates are probably going to (re)consider their options, if they have the chance to see the film.


Notes

[1] “Panoptic Eurocentric vision” refers to any representation of migrant narratives from a purely European perspective, without considering Africa’s viewpoints.


References

AFP. “Team behind Italian Film ‘Io Capitano’ Returns to Senegal.” AFP (Senegal), 2024, https://jordantimes.com/news/features/team-behind-italian%C2%A0film-%E2%80%98io-capitano%E2%80%99-returns-senegal. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.

Herbert, Matthew. “At the Edge: Trends and Routes of North African Clandestine Migrants.” Institute for Security Studies, 2016, https://issafrica.org/research/papers/at-the-edge-trends-and-routes-of-north-african-clandestine-migrants. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

“‘Io Capitano’: Oscar-Nominated Film Dramatizes Perilous Migrant Journey from West Africa to Europe.” YouTube, uploaded by Democracy Now, 08 Feb. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr1TVAoafMc&t=2s. Accessed 24 Feb. 2025.

Oltermann, Philip. “Matteo Garrone on His Migration Drama: ‘I Could Only Rely on the Sound of Their Voices to Tell If They Were Acting Well’.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2023, www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/25/matteo-garrone-io-capitano-interview. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.

Rothe, E. Nina. “Matteo Garrone Explains That His Award-Winning ‘Io Capitano’ Provides ‘A Reverse Shot of What We Are Used to Seeing’ in the Media.” Enina Rothe, 18 Dec. 2023, www.eninarothe.com/faces/2023/12/18/matteo-garrone-interview-in-marrakech-for-io-capitano. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024. ‎

Scarabicchi, Caterina. The Migrant’s Corner: Paradoxes of Representing Mediterranean Crossings in Italian and French Contemporary Culture. Peter Lang, 2023.


About the Author

Said Chemlal is a professor of English and Film Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the same university (2019) with a dissertation on Moroccan women’s cinema. He is the co-editor of a special issue of The Moroccan Cultural Studies Journal on Moroccan cinema (November 2017). Chemlal widely publishes on Moroccan cinema (in Arabic) in Moroccan and Arab magazines, and edited books. His articles in English have been published in The Journal of North African Studies, Journal of African Cinemas, Studies in European Cinema, Middle East Critique, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Africa Review. His interests include film studies, cultural studies, Amazigh culture, gender, and urban space.


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Citation: Said Chemlal, A Reverse Shot of Migratory Narratives in Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano (2022), in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 13.11.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/62424

 

 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (November 13, 2025). A Reverse Shot of Migratory Narratives in Matteo Garrone’s “Io Capitano” (2022). TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved December 7, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15510


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