In a hippy, trippy kind of way, filmmaker Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature echoes fellow Italian Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’, as he journeys to the heart of darkness, with the help of spellbinding German actor Franz Rogowski.

From a lighthearted scene of football fans from Belarus on a bus going to Poland for a soccer match, Disco Boy quickly turns into something else — a tale much darker and more disheartening.

Aleksei (played by the haunting Franz Rogowski) and his buddy Mikhail (Michal Balicki) sneak off the bus at the first chance they have, to evade their short term visa as they attempt to reach their dream destination — France. The guys learned about the country, wines and all, through cinema. But tragedy strikes, pretty early on and Aleksei finds himself solo, wandering the streets of the land he once dreamed about. It’s now a reality, much different from those visions, and he enrolls in the French Foreign Legion, a highly selective military corp that allows any foreigner, even undocumented, to be granted a French passport. As a child, I heard stories, or rather legends about these “legionnaires” who seemed part Marine, part gold prospectors, but mostly pirates dressed in uniforms.

I imagine that Abbruzzese has heard much of the same stories, hailing from Southern Italy himself.

At the same time, the story of Jomo (Morr Ndiaye) and his sister Udoka (Laëtitia Ky) is told, highlighting their guerrilla fighting for the environment and for the ultimate survival of their village in the Niger Delta. Oil refineries can be seen on the horizon and Jomo explains in a video message that their organization MEND, or the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, aims to stop the environmental disaster perpetuated by the Nigerian government. “In a few years, once the oil has run dry we will be left with no fish and a devastated land,” he says on the air, and I paraphrase slightly.

There is one trait that sets Jomo and Udoka apart, perhaps a sign of their enlightenment, their pioneering vision, as each of them sports one eye lighter than the other. It will become the key to the film, a symbol, but I won’t spoil it for you by giving the why of it away.

As this is cinema after all, and good cinema at that, Alex and Jomo are bound to eventually come face to face — one a kind of antihero who fights for the good of his people, the other a man who fights to secure a better future for himself. Each man carries a burden and their meeting is captured in the infrared cameras of the legionnaires’ night-sights, adding a special, otherworldly feel to the scene.

And the not-so-subtle tones of Colonialism, viewed from their opposing points of view, colored the film perfectly for me.

What makes the film seem a lot like Apocalypse Now is the way Disco Boy is shot, particularly when the action takes us to Africa. The cinematography by Hélène Louvart, who has shot a lot of Alice Rohrwacher’s work but also Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s stunning Murina, is up-close and intimate. Nigeria, much like Coppola’s Vietnam, feels and looks wet, wild and muddy, with hints of human destruction cropping up now and again, on arial views or in the distance.

Music also plays a big role in Disco Boy, as the title itself may imply. From Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien, to Vitalic’s acid house music soundtrack, to the climactic final scene, music is omnipresent and offers welcome relief from some of the heavier themes of the film.

The acting is phenomenal all around, with the wiry Rogowski selling us on the character’s pain, and need to prove himself through his physicality. But Ndiaye and Ky are also spot on and Croatian actor Leon Lučev is bewitching, playing the Foreign Legion squadron commander Paul.

As a funny aside, while I researched reactions to the film from its 2023 Berlinale world premiere, I had to chuckle at the THR review by Leslie Felperin, whose final verdict about this Competition Silver Bear winner states: “Claire Denis called: She wants her dance-climax back.” Because one can’t help but compare this film with Denis’s 1999 French Foreign Legion-feature Beau Travail.

Disco Boy opens on February 2nd in NYC at the New Plaza and Quad cinemas, with one more venue, the Roxy on February 9th. And also on February 9th in Los Angeles, at the Laemmle’s Glendale and Monica, and in San Francisco at Landmark’s Opera Plaza.

The film is released in the US by Big World Pictures. For more info, check out their website.

Images courtesy of Big World Pictures, used with permission.