Io capitano

This movie is appalling when it comes to scenery, camera perspective and visuals.

However, I can't not notice that what a beauty on the screen is to us, it is a horror for so many who are escaping the violence, authoritarianism, dictatorships and poverty caused by centuries of injustice and colonization from the ancestors of us movie viewers.

I loved the supernatural, mirage moments intertwined with hope, solidarity and cooperation that is needed to endure this extreme journey from which there is no return.

I was especially pleased by the depiction of the following polarity - the typical teenage experience those two boys are experiencing in Senegal versus the cruel adulthood they enter over night. They should have just been innocent boys and their journey should have been a slow progression into adulthood. Instead the reality in which they find themselves is the one of torture, fights, mafia, life threatening injury and enormous responsibility for too many lives.

Lastly, the movie ends with a pride and proclamation of victory - Io capitano.

What the movie shockingly misses is the crueler reality that is waiting on the other side of the journey. The supposedly civilized fortress Europe armed with Frontex, militia and hostility. In other worlds, the journey didn't stop in Siciliy. The other form of torture is awaiting for them - the one of pushbacks, uncertaintily, extreme racism, violence and living undocumented for too long.

And this is not a small element. It is the crucial one to have the story completed.