“Comandante”, interview with the actor Johannes Wirix

September 6, 2023

Belgian actor, 26, speaks about his role in "Comandante", while he hopes working again in Italy with other important directors

"Comandante", interview with the actor Johannes Wirix Giulia Bianconi

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Comandante is Johannes Wirix debut film. In Edoardo De Angelis movie, that’s opened the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the actor, 26, from Belgium, plays the role of Jacques Reclercq, one of the Belgian men who is saved by Salvatore Todaro, in command of the submarine Cappellini of the Italian Royal Navy, during the Second World War.

The biggest challenges

For Wirix the challenges were acting in Italian, overcoming his fears with water, which he’s having since he was a child, and creating the right bond with the character of Todaro, played by Pierfrancesco Favino.

An urgent and contemporary film

Comandante is a movie with a strong message of brotherhood. “Todaro is a real hero for me – he says Wirix – He had the courage to put man before the conflict, even though he was at war. This film can teach us to reflect so as not to repeat the same mistakes in history”.

Plot

At the beginning of the Second World War Salvatore Todaro is in command of the submarine Cappellini of the Italian Royal Navy. In October of the year 1940, while navigating in the Atlantic, the outline of a merchant ship comes into view, sailing without lights through the darkness of the night. She is the Kabalo, which later turns out to be a Belgian vessel, and suddenly opens fire on the submarine and its Italian crew.
A brief but fierce battle ensues in which Todaro sinks the enemy ship with gunfire. And it is at this point that the commander takes a decision that will go down in history: to rescue the twenty-six members of the Belgian crew from drowning in the middle of the ocean and tow their lifeboat to the nearest safe port, as required by the law of the sea. To do so he was obliged to remain on the surface for three days, exposing the submarine to enemy forces and putting at risk his own life and that of his men.
When the captain of the Kabalo, put ashore on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, asked him why he had been willing to take such a risk, disregarding the instructions of his own superiors, Salvatore Todaro responded with the words that have made him a legend: “The others do not have, like me, two thousand years of civilisation behind them.”

Written by: Giulia Bianconi

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