French film L'Histoire de Souleymane (Souleymane’s Story) brings the life of an undocumented Guinean migrant into sharp focus. Picking up two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, it has drawn attention to the real-life plight of lead actor Abou Sangaré, who is still waiting for a visa to be able to stay in France.
Combining real-life experiences and a semi-fictional story, French film director Boris Lojkine weaves together ingredients of documentary filmmaking with the pace of a thriller – where the main character is up against the clock.
Souleymane, played by Sangaré, is a young man who has left behind a fiancé and a sick mother to seek opportunities in France. He doesn’t have any official paperwork and he’s attempting to apply for asylum.
Lojkine creates cinematic tension by filming Souleymane on his bike as he races through the streets of Paris making food deliveries for a pittance, under a false identity.
“It was very important to me to have a form of precariousness for the camera because cycling in traffic is precarious. It’s dangerous,” Lojkine told RFI, adding that the action takes place within the space of 48 hours.
The constant movement gives the film a sense of urgency and provides a metaphor for the vulnerability of these delivery people and the precarious situation they find themselves in.
In rain, hail or shine, Souleymane deals with cranky restaurant staff, rude clients and even a bike accident. Then he makes his way back to the charity-run shelter where he can rest a while before doing it all again.
All the while, he’s rehearsing what he will say to the French asylum agency at his appointment in two days’ time. He is trying to scrape together the money to pay for the advice of a “specialist” who has handed him a concocted story to pass the test: he is a refugee, persecuted in his home country due to his political activism.
Lojkine says he wanted to make a story about a man who doesn’t fit into the simplistic category of a “good migrant”. Souleymane tells a lie to get his papers, but it is a lie built on human suffering that is just as poignant and desperate.
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What would you do?
Lojkine's question to the spectator is simple: what would you say if you had the power to decide whether Souleymane gets asylum or not?
“This is the kind of person we come across every day, without ever speaking to, without ever knowing their story,” the director says, insisting that bringing this invisible category of people into the spotlight helps others to humanise them.
The film also highlights the paradox France finds itself in – needing workers to fill gaps in the job market on the one hand, but also refusing to see the reality and identity of the people willing to do those jobs.
While holding auditions for non-professional actors, Lojkine came across Guinea-born Sangaré in Amiens, a city where the young man had attempted several times to get a formal visa without success, even though he arrived in France as a minor in 2017.
His story isn’t the same as Souleymane’s, but it is similar. Like many young men, Sangaré left his country in difficult circumstances and Lojkine says he was bowled over by the 23 year old's charismatic presence on screen.
“He clearly had something that no one else had. He was extremely charismatic, at the same time very accurate, very intense, with an inner tension that we feel very strongly on screen.”
Immigration overhaul
Lojkine hopes that by winning the Jury Prize as well as Best Actor for Sangaré in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival, the film will draw attention to Sangaré’s situation.
“After Cannes, I was hoping things would get sorted out,” he told weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. “But we’re in a delicate political situation, and things have kind of shut down.”
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He fears a bleak outlook for people like Sangaré, especially after France’s newly appointed interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, called for an overhaul of the immigration system and tougher rules on people who arrive without paperwork.
Meanwhile, French media reported on Friday that Sangaré, who has been offered a job as a mechanic in Amiens, had received a six-month temporary visa while his application for a work permit is assessed.
Sangaré is “relieved”, his agent told the press, but “well aware” that this story is far from over.
Souleymane's Story was released in France on 9 October 2024.
