I, Captain (2023)

This film from Italy chronicles the journey of two teenagers from Senegal trying to get to Europe to seek a better life for their their families. They are 16 years old and have not left their neighborhoods before they embark on the thousands of miles journey across Africa before they even get to the Mediterranean coast. The film opens outside of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, Seydou is first met waking up in the one-room house where he lives with his widowed mother and an uncountable number of little sisters, some of whom are seen dancing ecstatically in a local ceremony at which Seydou plays drums with his cousin Moussa. Seydou and Moussa have been secretly working on building sites for months to save money for a trip to Europe, where they hope to earn even more and perhaps become hip hop stars so famous that white people will want their autographs. Seydou is a largely obedient son, and so he tests the waters with his mother and asks what she’d think if he left for Europe, he says it would be to provide money for her and his sisters. Not that it matters to his mom. She flatly forbids him from going, warning that far too many people have died along the way, especially on the boats across the Mediterranean, words of warning that hang ominously in the air. Although Seydou will defy his mother’s wishes, he and Moussa take time before their departure to ask the local shaman to petition their ancestors for their leave to travel. Fortunately, permission is granted, and after paying a substantial amount of their savings to middlemen — thinking this should cover the whole journey to Europe — they set off on a bus headed west. They pass through Niger and at one point pick up fake passports. Their savings dwindle and the methods of transportation gradually get less comfortable and secure. The first sign of just how dangerous the journey will be, and how ruthless these traffickers are, comes when a man falls off the flatbed truck they’re all crammed into the back of as the driver races recklessly through the desert. There’s no chance that he’ll stop the truck to pick up the lost man, and it starts to dawn on Seydou that maybe his mother was right after all. Without giving too much away, she was right.