VATICAN CITY – How did it go?
“It was emotional, very emotional. The Pope looked at the images, the history of the injustices, the atrocities of the journey. Migrants are truly contemporary heroes, as he himself has defined them, and this is a film that gives visual form to that part of this contemporary odyssey that is unknown and about which Francesco himself has spoken many times. He told us that his parents were also migrants…».
Matteo Garrone speaks about it almost with modesty: on Thursday a special screening of “I Captain” was organized at the Vatican and before that he was received by the Pope in Santa Marta together with the protagonists of his film, Seydou Sarr and Moustapha in the fall. “At the end the Pope looked at me and said: “These are very intense images.” For us it was a wonderful meeting and we are grateful for it.”
Francesco decided to make his first trip to Lampedusa in 2013 and looking at the pictures of these days it seems like it was yesterday.
“Because it is not a sudden emergency, but a drama that has been repeating itself cyclically for decades. Francis told us that this is perhaps the biggest problem of our time, you can see how close he feels to it.”
Bergoglio himself denounced the “globalization of indifference.” Nevertheless, “I Captain” is doing very well in cinemas, it has caught on, how do you explain that?
“As Westerners, we are usually used to looking at this issue from our perspective. Instead, this film tells the journey from their perspective, that of the migrants, subjectively, so to speak. And Seydou’s interpretation is so human, I would say so spiritual, that it touches the viewer deeply. These days I am at the presentations of the film and I see a transversal audience, young, old, people who perhaps rarely go to the cinema, and in everyone I feel this empathy: they live and suffer with the character they feel first-hand what it means to suffer injustice.”
De Sica comes to mind, the camera at eye level with the protagonist…
“You know, we all have parents and neorealism is an inevitable reference for a director. I’m happy when De Sica comes to mind, for example when some people mentioned Rossellini during “Gomorrah”. Finally, there are masterpieces by De Sica, such as “Miracle in Milan,” which, in my opinion, express a kind of magical realism, the dimension of dreams. In the case of I Captain, Seydou’s dreams are linked to the desire to narrate both the internal and geographical journey, the journey of the soul through the guilt and trauma to which it is exposed.»
In all of this, beyond the recurring political controversies, something pre-political seems to come into play, which has primarily to do with the sense of humanity. Is that so?
“Yes, I agree, that’s why I’ve always avoided talking about politics. The film talks about injustice and the violation of basic human rights. We get used to thinking that migrants are numbers. What motivated us to make this film is an attempt to show that behind the statistics of the dead and survivors there are people, and everyone is a human being with parents, dreams, affections and desires. Exactly what Pope Francis tries to explain every time. He feels this injustice deeply.
You see the film and think: It should be shown in schools.
“I hope so. It is important that children can see this adventure with their peers. Sometimes we are used to taking things for granted that are not. For example, traveling. Of course, many are fleeing wars or climate change. But it’s not like someone just walks away out of desperation. As with the film’s protagonists, it is inevitable that a young man will feel the vital urge to travel, see the world and give himself a chance at a better life. While we were making the film, I saw many young people in Dakar living in dignified poverty, as post-war Italy might have been, in a climate of vitality and solidarity. And these children don’t understand why their European peers can travel and perhaps vacation in African countries, but they can’t and instead have to take this journey of death to get to Europe. There is a deep injustice in this. I didn’t make anything up, I stayed true to their stories.