Teenage cousins Seydou (Sarr) and Moussa (Fall) are virtually inseparable, having grown up together in Senegal. Both want to escape the numbing poverty of their life and chart their own path. They secretly decide to travel to Europe and pursue their dreams of success there. They start doing odd jobs to save money. The journey they eventually undertake will be way more than they bargained for.

Even with its stunning cinematography, Garrone’s  masterful “Io Capitano” is often very difficult to watch, as it recreates, up close and personal, the brutal, perilous journey many desperate migrants undergo every day. It is a slow, dirty, dehumanizing process where migrants are abused, exploited and sometimes killed. Seydou and Moussa are innocents, and when Seydou’s mother vehemently insists they not leave home, you wish he and Moussa would listen. Still, as the film unfolds, we root for them, hoping the raw will and courage that prompted them to leave in the first place will somehow see them through. The Oscar-nominated “Capitano” shines a piercing human light on the plight of migrants, while framing the cousins’ quest in noble, even heroic terms.