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The two teenagers on the screen trudging through the endless dunes of the Sahara on their way to Europe were actors. So were the fellow migrants tortured in a bloodstained Libyan prison.<\/p>\n
But to the young man watching the movie one recent evening in a suburb of Dakar, Senegal\u2019s capital, the cinematic ordeal felt all too real. His two brothers had undertaken the same journey years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why they refused to send me money to take that route,\u201d said Ahmadou Diallo, 18, a street cleaner. \u201cBecause they had seen firsthand how dangerous it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics in the West have praised the film \u201cIo Capitano\u201d \u2014 nominated for the 2024 Academy Award for best international feature film \u2014 noting its visceral yet tender look at migration to Europe from Africa. It is now showing in African countries, and is hitting close to home in Senegal. That\u2019s where the two main characters in the movie embark on an odyssey that epitomizes the dreams and hardships of countless more hoping to make it abroad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Last month, the film\u2019s crew and its director, Matteo Garrone, took \u201cIo Capitano\u201d to a dozen places in Senegal where migration isn\u2019t fiction. They screened it in youth centers, in schools, even on a basketball court turned outdoor movie theater in Gu\u00e9diawaye, a suburb of Dakar, where Mr. Diallo and hundreds of others watched it at sunset on a big screen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIo Capitano\u201d tells the story of Seydou and Moussa<\/a>, two endearing cousins who leave Dakar after months of planning, spending all of the savings they earned through straining work on a construction site.<\/p>\n But what begins as an exciting road trip quickly turns into a perilous expedition as the teenagers find themselves in the hands of careless smugglers, then under the control of armed robbers and cruel jailers, before they reach the deadliest step of their travels, the crossing of the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Seydou, the lead character, ends up captaining the ship taking them and hundreds of other migrants to Italy. The movie never shows them reaching the shore, but when a helicopter from the Italian coast guard hovers over the boat, the viewer is tempted to believe that they will be rescued and that part of their troubles are over.<\/p>\n On the basketball court, some gasped in horror when bandits opened fire on a group of migrants on the screen. Others hid their eyes with their head scarves during scenes of torture.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople know there\u2019s a risk to lose their lives\u201d in seeking to migrate to Europe, Mr. Garrone said. \u201cBut they haven\u2019t seen what it\u2019s like.\u201d<\/p>\n Senegal\u2019s youth make up the majority of its 17 million people, but its fast-growing economy has struggled to offer them jobs with decent pay. Thousands leave every year through the Sahara<\/a> and the Atlantic Ocean<\/a>, and deadly accidents are frequent. Increasingly, those who can afford it fly to Central America<\/a>, hoping to reach the United States that way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n