Souleymane’s Story

February 11 & 12

Wednesday 1:30 & 7 pm
Tuesday 7 pm

Rated PG – 1hr 35min
Drama
French with English Subtitles

Abou Sangaré is magnificent in a story that shines light on the enforced invisibility of economic migrants. Souleymane is a kind of every-immigrant, clinging on at the margins of the French capital. Hailing from Guinea, he sublets the delivery app account of Cameroonian Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie) in order to work. Under constant pressure to meet food delivery targets, he needs money in order to pay fellow Guinean Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), who is coaching him how to pass his asylum interview the day after next. But the harassed Souleymane struggles to reproduce the details of the political repression story that Barry recommends he tell.

In the anguishing character study Souleymane’s Story, dreams dissolve into despair. The film, directed by Boris Lojkine, is a trying narrative about Souleymane (Abou Sangaré), a Guinean immigrant anxiously applying for asylum in France. He is a pure spirit, the kind of person who simply wants to start a new life in a new country, but is hindered by a system that prioritizes exposing one’s trauma over accepting the content of their character. Consequently, if he hopes to gain asylum, he’s tasked with what must be an unnatural act for him. Souleymane must lie.

Riding shotgun with Souleymane as he crosses the Parisian boulevards, the film features some of the hairiest cycling scenes since Buster Keaton. Director Boris Lojkine shoots France’s ever-shifting capital with hazy impressionistic beauty, occasionally breaking out of shallow focus with a sobering crystalline composition to situate his protagonist in this capitalist warren. But Souleymane is the constant focal point and in a precarious position – not just traffic-wise, but also economically and emotionally. As he needily bugs the app’s call centre, then loses his rag with a restaurateur behind on his orders, the film watches these micro-humiliations steadily erode his soul.

Set over three days, Lojkine’s script, which he co-wrote with Delphine Agut (Inshallah a Boy), never once leaves Souleymane’s side as he deals with setback after setback. That could all change if he manages to pass an interview with an immigration officer in charge of determining whether he deserves a coveted carte de séjour, which would allow him to live and work legally in France.  The director clearly spent time researching his subject, revealing the nitty gritty of a job where every single movement is monitored by an all-powerful app. He also shows how Souleymane is part of a larger coterie of African migrant deliverers — predominantly hailing from Guinea, Mali and the Ivory Coast — who earn so little money that they have to spend their nights in a homeless shelter far from the center of town.

“Man is a wolf to man,” is an adage that Souleymane runs into constantly, most often perpetrated by people of his own national background, who misuse their secure position in French society to take advantage of their struggling countrymen. By exposing this moral rot without losing sight of its boundless empathy, Souleymane’s Story is beautiful and unsparing in depicting its protagonist’s horrifyingly precarious circumstances. Souleymane’s Story is a moving testament to resilience in the face of enormous struggle, with the film’s dedicated approach to conveying its protagonist’s day-to-day reality grounding these anxiety-inducing and climactic few days in his life.