The Commander

The Commander (2023)

Comandante

One dark night during the early phases of WWII, the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini sinks an armed merchant ship sailing with lights out. At that moment, its commander Salvatore Todaro makes a decision that was destined to go down in history: to save the 26 shipwrecked Belgians who otherwise would have drowned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and disembark them at the nearest safe harbor. To make room for them on board his submarine, he is forced to navigate on the surface of the water for three days, visible to the enemy forces and endangering his life and that of his men.

Date of release
2023-10-31
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (241)
Runtime
2h 0m
Genres
War, History, Drama
Director
Edoardo De Angelis

Casting

Interesting facts

Comandante is a 2023 Italian war drama film co-written and directed by Edoardo De Angelis and starring Pierfrancesco Favino. The film tells an episode of the Battle of the Atlantic, when the Italian submarine Comandante Cappellini sank the Belgian ship Kabalo, and Cappellini's commander Salvatore Todaro (Favino) decided to disobey orders and to rescue the Kabalo's crew, being forced to navigate on the surface for three days, making the ship an easy target for enemies. The film opened the 80th Venice Film Festival on 30 August 2023.

Production

Director Edoardo De Angelis became interested in the story following a speech delivered in 2018 by Admiral Giovanni Pettorino during the 153rd anniversary of the Italian Coast Guard, in which Pettorino referenced Todaro as an example in contrast to the policies of the Conte I Government towards NGOs and the European migrant crisis. The film had a budget of €14.5 million.

Production designer Carmine Guarino faced challenges in creating a full-scale replica of the submarine featured in the film due to the lack of schematics and interior photographs of Italian submarines from that era. After creating a 3D model, Guarino collaborated with mechanical engineer Nicola Ferrari, who designed a "strut system" to make the submarine float in the Ferrati Naval Basin of the Taranto Naval Arsenal and then allowed it to navigate…

The interiors were reconstructed at Cinecittà World, using the replica of a U-Boat built for the film U-571 (2000) as a base. Meanwhile, the submarine's hull was built directly in Taranto over eight months.

In total, the Cappellini replica weighed over 70 tons and measured 73 meters in length. Its construction involved over 100 engineers, builders, and artisans, with support from the Italian Navy’s historical office, the staff of the Historical Exhibition of the Arsenal, and Fincantieri.

Filming began on 5 September 2022 in Taranto, at the Naval Arsenal of the Italian Navy, and continued there for eight weeks on the waters of the Mar Piccolo. Four days of underwater filming were then conducted in Belgium.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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