Sting, Isabella Rossellini, and U.S. director Roger Ross Williams (“The Apollo,” “Stamped from the Beginning”) came out to support the recent New York launch of Matteo Garrone’s Venice prizewinning immigration epic “Io Capitano” at the Museum of Modern Art.
The movie – which is Italy’s now shortlisted Oscar candidate for best international feature film – narrates the Homeric journey of two two Senegalese teenagers, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe in pursuit of a better life. It realistically depicts their plight through the pitfalls of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea.
Variety critic Guy Lodge in his review called “Io Capitano” the director’s “most robust, purely satisfying filmmaking since Garrone’s international breakthrough with ‘Gomorrah’ 15 years ago.” The drama, which at Venice won best director and best emerging actor for its co-star Seydou Sarr (pictured above, right, with Sting – to the left is Mamadou Kouassia whose plight partly inspired the film) is Italy’s strongest Oscar contender in recent memory. The film, which also won best European film at San Sebastian, will be released in the U.S. on Feb. 23 by Cohen Media Group.
At the packed Jan. 4 MoMa screening Isabella Rossellini made a passionate introduction to Garrone’s latest work.
“When I saw this film, ‘Io Capitano,’ at the end, I thought of my father and I said: ‘Oh, my father would’ve loved this film,” Rossellini said.
“My father is the director Roberto Rossellini. With Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, they started a new movement in the cinema called Neorealism. It was right after the Second World War. And [my] father, De Sica, [and] Visconti, they felt the urge to tell how it was to live the war, how it was to reintegrate in the world, and how it was to live in postwar. Their film was not entertainment. It wasn’t fantasy. But they saw that cinema can be used for knowledge. And since it has the magic to make us live other realities, then to live other realities,” the star actor, director and model who, of course, is Rossellini’s daughter, added.
“And I see that in your film,” she went on, calling Matteo Garrone, “very much a Rossellini son, a brother to me.” “I saw this film and I wanted to support it and show it to you tonight.”
“Io Capitano” was produced by Garrone and Paolo Del Brocco. Co-producers are Ardavan Safaee, Joseph Rouschop and Valerie Bournonville. Producers are Archimede with RAI Cinema and Tarantula with Pathé, Logical Content Ventures.
