(CNN) — Matteo Garrone knew how his movie would finish. However the Italian director waited till the final moments of filming to disclose the ending to the main actors.

“Io Capitano” tells the story, much like that of “The Odyssey”, of migrant youngsters who undertake a harmful journey from Africa to Europe. It received greatest director ultimately 12 months’s Venice Worldwide Movie Competition and is one in all 5 movies competing for greatest worldwide function at this 12 months’s Academy Awards. It was lately launched in theaters in the US, to glorious opinions and a rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie stars Senegalese actors Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, who play the roles of cousins ​​Seydou and Moussa, who share the actors’ first names however have very completely different tales.

“From the start, they did not know if their characters would achieve success of their journey or not,” Garrone stated.

For Sarr, whose efficiency earned him the award for greatest younger actor on the Venice pageant, the strategy was particularly troublesome.

“The whole lot was executed on the fly. The day would come, the producer would give me the pages, the translator would inform me the dialogue… and I’d get into character instantly,” Sarr stated in a press launch concerning the movie. “It was purely instinctive.”

That, Garrone says, helped make his performances appear extra actual. And it wasn’t the one factor he did to make sure the movie’s authenticity.

Senegalese actors Seydou Sarr, proper, and Moustapha Fall pose for the digital camera close to Rome in February. (Credit score: Domenico Stinellis/AP)

Garrone hopes the movie will present injustices

The movie’s title, which interprets into English as “Me Captain” and into Spanish as “Yo Capitan,” is a reference to migrants who’re pressured to develop into captains of ships crossing the ocean. It was not an expertise Garrone had personally skilled, however listening to historic accounts captured his creativeness, such because the story of a 15-year-old boy from West Africa who managed to navigate a ship filled with 250 individuals throughout the Mediterranean to security in Italy in 2014 regardless of having no maritime expertise.

For Garrone, the act was as heroic as a quest in an historical epic, however that is not how he noticed the tales portrayed. For instance, {the teenager} who managed to sail the ship was jailed for six months.

“Typically it is simpler to imprison individuals who haven’t got a voice,” Garrone informed journalist Hari Sreenivasan on CNN’s Amanpour in early 2024. “It is an injustice, and we hope the movie exhibits these injustices to everybody and issues change.”

As a result of he solely knew the migrant expertise from the Italian perspective, Garrone knew he would want the assistance of others to inform the story.

Director Matteo Garrone poses for a portrait in the course of the 96th Oscar nominees luncheon in February. (Credit score: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Migrants who survived related journeys have been extras within the movie

Many of the movie’s dialogue is in Wolof, a language Garrone doesn’t converse.

“That was the explanation I made a decision instantly that the one technique to make the film was collectively,” Garrone informed Amanpour, describing the group he assembled.

The director says he noticed himself as an middleman, connecting the general public with migrants and their experiences. To do that, he interviewed migrants and researched their tales whereas growing the movie’s script, and in addition had migrants as advisors throughout filming.

“All of the extras within the movie have been actual survivors, actual migrants who had already made that journey. So that they have been in a position to assist me recreate the authenticity of this journey, the main points,” Garrone says. “And sure, all of us made this film collectively.”

Getting it proper wasn’t simply necessary to creating a true-to-life film, Garrone says. One staggering statistic he present in his analysis was by no means removed from his thoughts: Since 2014, authorities estimate that greater than 25,000 migrants have died making an attempt to cross the Mediterranean.

“We needed to be genuine out of respect for the individuals who made this journey,” Garrone says, “out of respect for the individuals who died on this journey.”

A unbelievable scene from “Io Capitano” exhibits the movie’s protagonist (performed by Sarr) serving to a girl cross the desert. (Credit score: Greta De Lazzaris/Pathé)

How one man’s expertise helped form the movie

For Mamadou Kouassi, the exploits described within the movie usually are not simply plot twists in a film.

They’re echoes of their very own experiences.

Kouassi suggested on the movie’s script and met a number of instances with Garrone and his co-writers. He left the Ivory Coast for Europe in 2006. He says that he noticed individuals deserted within the desert, that he was separated from his cousin and that he was later detained in Libya, occasions which are described within the movie.

“I began crying in the course of the film,” Kouassi informed CNN final 12 months, a day after its launch. “This film makes me relive my life from 15 years in the past. It is an emotion I had forgotten.”

Mamadou Kouassi shared his personal immigration expertise as a script advisor for “Io Capitano.” Kouassi traveled from his native Ivory Coast to Italy in 2006. (Credit score: Domenico Stinellis/AP)

Garrone says the movie’s plot is an amalgamation of a number of migrants’ tales. However Kouassi’s was particularly helpful.

“Mammadou’s story was probably the most invaluable for me, as a result of his story revealed points that basically stunned me and that I had fully ignored,” the director informed CNN final 12 months. “They’re very human and intimate particulars which are on the foundation of the choice to depart his nation.”

Kouassi defined to Amanpour that it’s a alternative that many migrants proceed to make, regardless of listening to concerning the risks that await them, as a result of they’re decided to make their goals come true.

“We determined to cross the desert at any value. That is actuality,” he says.

A actuality that he hopes many extra individuals perceive because of Garrone’s consideration to element and his efforts to inform the story from the migrants’ viewpoint.

“Matteo did not depart something out,” Kouassi informed CNN final 12 months. “He defined -exposed- actuality and fact.”

And like its protagonists, the movie’s viewers must wait till the tip to search out out what occurs.

CNN’s Thomas Web page contributed to this report.