The Commander

October 1940, the Atlantic. The Italian submarine Cappellini meets an unidentified merchant ship running without lights and sinks it. Then its commander, Salvatore Todaro, makes a decision that breaks the rules of the war: he pulls the twenty six Belgian sailors of the Kabalo out of the water, puts them on deck and below, and slows his boat to carry them to land. Edoardo De Angelis directs and co-writes. Pierfrancesco Favino plays Todaro. The film opened the 80th Venice Film Festival, premiering in the Sala Grande on 30 August 2023. The events are not invented. Todaro's rescue happened, and the exchange with the Belgian captain went into the record largely as it appears here. Todaro explained saving an enemy as the obligation of a two thousand year old civilisation. That is also where the difficulty sits. Todaro was an officer of Fascist Italy, and the film was criticised for presenting him as a model of humanity while leaving that context at the edge of the frame. In Italy the argument became explicitly political. The submarine interior was built at full scale, and most of the film was shot inside that volume. Who it is for: viewers who like submarine films and arguments about the ethics of war. Who it is not for: the heroic register asks you to accept the political reality of the period without examining it. If that grates, watch at a distance.