After a detour via Prime Video with his dark adaptation of Pinocchio, Mateo Garrone returns to cinemas with Moi Capitaine. The film was doubly rewarded at the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered, with the Silver Lion for Best Director and the Best Emerging Actor award for actor Seydou Sarr.
Moi Capitaine is broadcast on Canal+.
Synopsis: Seydou and Moussa, two 16-year-old Senegalese boys, decide to leave their homeland for Europe. But along the way, their hopes and dreams of a better life are quickly dashed by the dangers of the journey. Their only weapon in this odyssey is their humanity.
And after two feature-length films that come close to fairy tales in their themes and aesthetics (Dogman and Pinocchio), this time Mateo Garrone offers us a most realistic story, that of the crossing of Africa by Seydou and Moussa, two 16-year-old Senegalese youths who decide to leave their family and homeland to reach Italy. In this modern odyssey, the two migrants discover the worst of humanity, and come close to death at every stage of their journey.
And even if the film stands in stark contrast to the rest of Garrone's filmography, it still reveals his interest in phantasmagoria, and of course, the weakness of the very young in the face of a malicious system rotten to the core. In this headlong rush with no way of turning back, the two teenagers experience everything, and their odyssey is almost reminiscent of Sam Mendes' 1917, where the setting is different, but the emotions are the same.
Moi Capitaine is the first shock of 2024, and one of the must-haves of this January.
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