2023-11-01 13:57:41
by Valerio Cappelli
Marco Bocci the commander: I am an average Italian. The survivors fear being returned to Libya and organize the hijacking. The director: We were authentic. Screenwriter Bises: We took sides, what we did doesn’t work
People dance, have fun, do karaoke, when twenty-eight migrants are rescued by a cruise ship. The contrast between lights that always seems like Christmas and the sounds of those born under the right sky, and the scars and shipwreck of those born under the wrong clear sky. After the authorial vertigo of Matteo Garrone (Io Capitano) here is Unwanted (Hostages of the Sea), Oliver Hirschbiegel’s series in eight episodes from 3 November on Sky and streaming on Now (here are the other series coming out this week). From the point of view of migrants, from many points of view: the reasons of those fleeing from war, hunger and poverty, and the thoughts of the three thousand Western passengers on holiday (plus two thousand crew), the cynic, the one who doesn’t care the hands, the empathetic one according to which we do nothing to integrate them, in a cross-flow of fears. The ship’s hospitality director says that contact must be avoided: Passengers are here to live a dream; reality must stay at home.
Marco Bocci the commander: I am an average Italian, on my first assignment, I represent the company and act according to the standard, I have to take decisions made by others, even if I don’t agree with them. There is a sense of inadequacy, I am aware of my role, I just don’t know how to control the unexpected, and I can’t admit it to myself. Her alter ego, the German Jessica Schwarz, a woman of one piece, her deputy on the side of ensuring the safety of migrants, says that orders are not followed but given.
The question on which everything revolves: what is our duty on the open sea? Save lives according to the law of the sea, or act according to the law of the government? The commander experiences a moral dilemma about the right thing to do, on his own skin rather than telling it. The director says: We chose to be authentic, fair and not express judgements. But Stefano Bises, screenwriter and creator of the series, disagrees: We have taken sides when it is said that what has been done so far doesn’t work and doesn’t solve the problems. The real trouble, the pain and death, happen when the walls go up, things come to a head when twenty-eight people are not allowed to arrive in Italy.
In Tunis they refuse to disembark. We head to Malta, the migrants are convinced that they are about to be handed over to Libya, facing certain death. They are led by the Nigerian Dada Bozela, a big man who looks like Lukaku, hides his identity as a human trafficker and heads the hijacking. Unwanted inspired by Bilal, the book by Fabrizio Gatti who as an infiltrator made the journey to the Sahara among migrants: Italy’s demographic collapse will lead to minus 12 percent of GDP in 2042, with an increase in elderly people and an increase in expenses for social security and healthcare. We have people knocking on our door. Perhaps a legal route would be possible, as has been the case in the past.
Two different worlds find themselves rethinking the concepts of right and wrong, the priorities depend on where you are born. Meanwhile, the story is punctuated by (bloody) flashbacks to the Libyans’ horrors regarding those who escape: the arrests, the torture, the money to be free again. Bocci: Each character reacts to something that at the beginning he only knows from afar, then he gets an idea of it and is involved in a different way. Inevitable question: would you like Salvini to see it? I don’t think his point of view on this issue (that his brand and his life philosophy) would change. I would like as many people as possible to see it. But aren’t the spectator’s eyes, at this moment, satisfied with Garrone’s Captain, still in theaters? I don’t have this sense of satiety, our story is different. It was filmed on a real, new ship, docked in Civitavecchia, where the gigantic cruise is a miniature of our world.
November 1, 2023 (modified November 1, 2023 | 1:13 pm)
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