“Io Capitano” by Matteo Garrone is the film that Italy has nominated for the Oscar race for Best International Film. The work, which won the Silver Lion for Directing and the Marcello Mastroianni Prize for Young Actors at the Venice Film Festival, beat eleven other films nominated for the selection, which took place today at the Anica Commission met. We have to wait until December 21st for the shortlist. Nominations will be announced on January 23, 2024. The Oscars will take place on March 10, 2024 in Los Angeles.
“We are very proud to be able to represent Italy with Io Capitano eV at the Oscars We hope that Seydou’s journey also touches the hearts of the American public“, explains Matteo Garrone immediately after the Italian nomination for the Oscar race for best international film.
The selection committee
The selection committee for the Italian film to be nominated for the Oscars was founded by ANICA on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, meets before a notary and consists of Alessandro Araimo, Domizia De Rosa, Esmeralda Calabria, Daniela Ciancio and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Giorgio Moroder, Cristiana Paternò, Michele Placido, Paola Randi, Riccardo Tozzi and Gianpiero Tulelli chose Io Capitano by Matteo Garrone in the selection for the feature film category, the film that Italy at the 96th edition of the Academy Awards is represented film award.
The motivation
This is the motivation: “To have embodied the universal desire for freedom and happiness with great power and cinematic mastery. “To create an epic dream that stages the courage and pain that have always characterized migrations in an atmosphere of deep humanity.” Io Capitano will apply for the shortlist, which includes the fifteen best international films selected by the Academy and will take place on December 21, 2023 will be announced. The announcement of the nominations (the five films nominated for the award) is scheduled for January 23, 2024, while the Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 10, 2024 in Los Angeles.
I Captain, a contemporary odyssey
Io Capitano was chosen because of the prestigious award it just won in Venice, the Silver Lion, although distribution in America is still ongoing despite ongoing negotiations – a crucial factor in Garrone’s Oscar campaign and the emotional one Wave that drives the film into cinemas despite the difficult, current topic of migrants.
And 01 Distribution announced that the number of copies of the film has been increased to 350, also due to the enthusiasm generated for Io Capitano since the exciting premiere in the large hall of the Palazzo del Cinema. And Garrone, a generous person – as he demonstrated on the stage of the Venice finale with his young protagonists Seydou and Moussa, giving the floor to Mamadou, a migrant who survived the crossing – accompanies this poetic and tragic work of his on tour the theater.
The film is the contemporary odyssey of two young people from Senegal who decide to set off for Europe, crossing the stages of the desert, the prisons of the Libyan torturers, the journey across the Mediterranean as in a way of the cross until they arrive in a kind of promised place Country. A film that Garrone wanted to dedicate to all those who did not make it on the journey to Fortress Europe, but which underlines how it is a longing for freedom, for free movement, that people at all latitudes, especially young people, on the Looking for a moving future better and different.
Io Capitano is an international Italian-Belgian co-production; an Archimede production with Rai Cinema and Tarantula and has already been sold in India, Canada, throughout Latin America, Israel, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, while France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg are already co-producing countries.
The competitors
The road is long, very long and the other competitors are certainly no less beautiful films: from Australia, which nominated Shayda, which won Sundance, from Japan with the great Perfect Days by Wim Wenders to Finland with the touching Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki Ukraine with 20 days in Mariupol, but Io Capitano sets sail in the meantime.
Paolo Del Brocco (Rai Cinema), Garrone speaks the language of the world
“It is an honor to take part in the competition for the Academy Awards with a work by an exceptionally talented author who knows how to speak the language of the world, who manages to deal with one of the most complex issues in our world today and makes himself understandable to everyone by transforming the images we see before our eyes every day into an epic story with strong emotional features that hits every viewer straight to the heart. Proof of this is the experience of recent days in cinemas across Italy, where audiences are greeting the film and the cast that accompanies it with a wave of virtually unanimous approval and emotion. Broadly similar to the success that Io Capitano deservedly achieved with the public, with critics, with the international press and the jury, during the Mostra del Cinema in Venice. A general recognition that increases the film’s chances of competing with the other candidates. For Del Brocco: “Many other works in the selection, most of which were co-produced by Rai Cinema, were worthy of competition and were each characterized by the presence of major international co-producers, which confirmed how high the attractiveness of the foreign market was for them. “Cinema is Italian, also thanks to the strong and decisive support of the Ministry of Culture.”
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