19/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Boris Lojkine has made a thrilling, moving and edifying humanist film about three decisive days in the life of a Guinean exile in Paris

Abou Sangare in The Story of Souleymane

“We're not your slaves - Go home if you're not happy.” With the highly accomplished The Story of Souleymane [+see also:
interview: Boris Lojkine
film profile], screened in the Un Certain Regard competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, French filmmaker Boris Lojkine plunges with gripping intensity into a kind of B-side of the topic of illegal immigration, which he had already tackled with great acuity in his first feature, Hope [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Boris Lojkine
film profile], which was appreciated on the Croisette at the Critics’ Week. But while Hope retraced the migratory route from Africa to Europe, this time the director takes the viewer to the heart of Paris, at top speed, on the bicycle of a tormented Guinean delivery boy (Uber Eats kind) whose future in France will be decided two days later, during an interview at OFPRA (the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) that will determine his application for asylum.

"You mustn't be afraid, you know what you've been through. You're not a liar. It's like an exam, you have to speak calmly, take your time and look at the person." Despite the reassuring advice, young Souleymane (the charismatic Abou Sangare, making his on-screen debut) doesn't have much to go on, anxiously revising and repeating on his bicycle as he criss-crosses the capital (in a frenetic round of restaurants and flats), the very precise details of a story recorded for him by the Parisian representative of the UFDG (Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea): a political commitment to a social project promoting education, demonstrations, an arrest in 2020 and prison.

But Souleymane also has to find the money for the next day to pay for the documents that go with it (a party membership card, certificate, attestation). And it's Emmanuel, the real owner of the Uber Eats account (who rents it to him for 120 euros a week), who has to provide this modest sum, as Souleymane has earned 302 euros in seven days by pedalling his bike, braving the elements, the rain, the traffic and the risk of accidents. All this without missing the shuttle bus that takes him to a hostel in the inner suburbs at night, with a shower, a bunk bed and some hard-pressed ‘friends’. But everything is in danger of being derailed by a delivery that goes wrong, and a race against time begins...

In addition to its breathless tempo, its very physical and very empathetic dimension, with its camera glued to a character who is constantly on the move, L'histoire de Souleymane manages to deal very aptly (a script written by the director and Delphine Agut) with all the facets of the exile's psychologically trying situation (from Facetime calls home to his sick mother and his ex who is reluctant to marry another man), the doubts (“I don't know why I came to France”), the instinct to survive in an urban environment where everything is not necessarily hostile but where nothing is easy, and the final face-off with the authorities deciding on the asylum application. It's a dazzling, touching and fascinating piece, and Boris Lojkine's powerful documentary is transformed into a humanist fiction that moves at 100 km an hour and is worthy of praise.

The Story of Souleymane was produced by Unité. It is sold by Pyramide International.

(Translated from French by Margaux Comte)

Photogallery 20/05/2024: Cannes 2024 - The Story of Souleymane

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Boris Lojkine, Nina Meurisse, Abou Sangare
© 2024 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it