GUÉDIAWAYE, Senegal — The two teenagers shown on screen trudging through the Sahara on their way to Europe were actors. But for the young man watching the film in Senegal, the terrifying cinematic experience seemed all too real. His two brothers had undertaken the same journey years before.
“That’s why they refused to send me money to take that route,” said Ahmadou Diallo, 18, a street sweeper. “Because they had seen firsthand how dangerous it is.”
Western critics have praised the film “Io Capitano” — nominated for the 2024 Academy Award for best international feature film — highlighting its visceral, yet tender, look at migration. It is now being screened in African countries, including Senegal, where the film’s two protagonists embark on their odyssey.
The film’s technical team and its director, Matteo Garrone, have screened it in youth centers, in schools and even on a basketball court in Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, where Diallo and hundreds of others watched it. they saw.
“Io Capitano” tells the story of Seydou and Moussa, two cousins who leave Dakar and spend all the savings they earned working as bricklayers on a construction site.
The journey quickly turns into a dangerous expedition as the teens find themselves in the hands of careless smugglers, then under the control of armed robbers and cruel jailers, before reaching the deadliest step: crossing the Mediterranean.
On the basketball court, some gasped in horror as bandits opened fire on a group of immigrants on the screen. Others hid their eyes during the torture scenes.
“People know there is a risk of losing their life,” Garrone said. “But they haven’t seen what it’s like.”
Senegal’s young people make up the majority of its 17 million people, but its fast-growing economy has struggled to offer them decent-paying jobs. Thousands set out each year across the Sahara and the Atlantic Ocean, and fatal accidents are frequent.
Diallo said he wanted to join his brothers in Paris. He showed videos on his phone of himself in the Atlantic last summer, during one of his two previous — and failed — attempts to reach Europe.
Barra Gassama, 18, watched “Io Capitano” with sometimes teary eyes. A decade ago, she said, she received a phone call informing her that her older brother had died on the way to Spain. “That call changed our lives,” she said. “This reminds me a lot.”
Garrone said the film was not intended to persuade people not to take the journey. “What I hope most is to help young people in Senegal realize that once they leave home, they become part of a system that they really can’t get out of,” he said.
To portray the system of smugglers and exploitation, Garrone worked with Mamadou Kouassi, a social worker now working with immigrants in Italy, who spent three and a half years trying to reach Europe from his native Ivory Coast.
“They have no idea how Europe and Italy treat us on the other side,” Kouassi said, referring to spectators.
After the screening, Ndeye Khady Sy, the actress who plays Seydou’s mother, urged the audience to stay in Senegal. “They can be successful here,” she said.
But Diallo had left the basketball court. He said that he would try to make it to Europe for the third time this summer.
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