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 as individual subjectivities, who become active participants in the film themselves, 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.


