SOULEYMANE’S STORY – Review by Diane Carson
Souleymane’s Story reveals a Guinean deliveryman’s Parisian life
Seldom does a film conclude with the viewer’s immediate impression being, “That was perfect, absolutely perfect.” But that’s an earned, reaction for director Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story told entirely through Souleymane Sangare’s experiences as a bicycle food delivery man in Paris. Racing through that city’s nighttime, neon splendor, Souleymane faces two imminent, major crises and multiple smaller ones.
As a Guinean immigrant in France, Souleymane’s interview in two days will decide approval or rejection of his decisive asylum petition. However, Souleymane’s most pressing problem is earning enough money to get critical official documents from Barry who supplies counterfeit paperwork to hopeful applicants. Souleymane’s second challenge also involves Barry who coaches Souleymane in the fabricated story he must relate to the key French official in order to justify asylum status. But Souleymane has trouble keeping the fictionalized dates and events straight. Added to these colossal hurdles, food suppliers and delivery recipients do not always facilitate Souleymane’s nonstop dashing from restaurant to recipient. One in a seventh floor walkup refuses to meet him halfway, another won’t accept a mangled bag (which means no pay), one elderly man moves very slowly (and Souleymane empathetically helps him), and all food recipients must find and provide a code for Souleymane to be paid. That poses its own predicament since he is using Cameroonian Emmanuel Bahana’s account, and Bahana must pass the earned money on to Souleymane. Meantime, Souleymane must race for a bus or he won’t make it to a homeless shelter where he bunks with a colleague each night.
All this would prove daunting, if not impossible, for any ordinary person. But there’s more, including phone calls with and worry over his mother and his girlfriend Kadiatou in Guinea, an encounter with policemen, plus a myriad of other details Souleymane negotiates. Most significantly, co-writer/director Boris Lojkine consummately and thrillingly conveys the life of migrants in France through Souleymane and acquaintances with whom he interacts. Though fictionalized, the story feels like a documentary of the highest order, this because Lojkine and co-writer Delphine Agut interviewed numerous food delivery workers and asylum seekers. According to Lojkine, every immigrant interviewee obsessed over the asylum application process knowing their success or failure would determine their future.
As Lojkine writes in press notes, for several years he wanted “to make a film about the bicycle couriers who crisscross the city with their turquoise or bright yellow bags, branded with the app they work for, so visible yet completely clandestine—most of them undocumented.” He approached Paris not as his familiar, comfortable home but “as a foreign city,” the way Souleymane and other emigrants experience it, cursed by certain residents, invisible to others, resented by some. In every scene, Lojkine transforms Souleymane’s story into a thrilling “grappling with the merciless system.” Provocatively, Lojkine decided early on that Souleymane must be a man who lies, adding another ethical layer to the immigration issue. With this complication, the viewer must decide if Souleymane deserves asylum status. No spoilers, but the lengthy concluding scene is breathtaking, intense, and realistic. For it. Lojkine interviewed both Guineans and asylum officers to incorporate both perspectives.
That most of the characters are non-professional actors enhances the environment, one Lojkine infused with the cast’s lived experiences. As Souleymane, first-time actor, 23-year-old Abou Sangare is dynamic. Having arrived in France seven years earlier, Sangare previously worked as a mechanic. Once cast, he immersed himself in the role, delivering food for weeks to absorb every nuance of that world. Thrusting viewers into the action, Belgian cinematographer Tristan Galand shot from bicycles trailing Souleymane’s bike on streets open to pedestrians and cars with the exception of only one scene. As Lojkine observes, “We get to absorb its energy, and have a constant sense of danger. . . . it was the only way for us to slip into the traffic.” Editor Xavier Sirven emphasizes speed, reminiscent of “Run, Lola, Run.” Reinforcing captured reality, no music accompanies any scene, the sounds of the city dominating as happens in real life. Every astute decision keeps the aesthetic exceptionally authentic as Lojkine imparts Souleymane’s palpable, overpowering anxiety directly to the viewer.
Abou Sangere won the Best Actor Award and Souleymane’s Story won the Jury Prize in the 2024 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar. Souleymane’s Story is in French, Fulah, and Malinka with English subtitles.
