By Karl Quinn
The Story of Souleymane (L’histoire de Souleymane),
★★★★½
M, 94 min
For many in the West, debates around immigration often involve a hierarchy of types: professional migrants and asylum seekers at the least problematic end of the spectrum, economic refugees with no clear humanitarian grounds to leave their homeland – accused of being queue jumpers and so despised by nationalists and right-wing populists – at the other.
The genius of The Story of Souleymane, one of the best films I’ve seen this year, is that it demolishes those distinctions. It is a tale about an asylum seeker whose case, on paper at least, is flimsy. But after spending a couple of days (condensed into a brisk and hyper-tense 93 minutes) with Souleymane, you can’t help hoping for anything but the best for him.
Abou Sangare plays a migrant delivery worker in Paris.Credit: Palace Films
Souleymane is a refugee from Guinea, working as a bicycle delivery rider in Paris, sleeping in a homeless shelter, and trying desperately to memorise the concocted story he is due to tell at his upcoming asylum hearing.
The film opens as he’s called for his interview – he’s dabbing at a spot of blood he’s just noticed on the cuff of his borrowed white shirt – and then tracks him over the two days leading up to that moment.
In its final heartbreaking scene, we move inside the interview room, where Souleymane desperately tries to convince his assessor (Nina Meurisse, who won a Cesar last year for her brief but touching performance) that he has a legitimate case to be offered succour by the state.
Director Boris Lojkine (who co-wrote with Delphine Agut) employs a verite style that keeps us close to Souleymane, often right up in his face. We’re there as he pedals hard through the teeming streets, dodging buses and not always dodging vehicles. We’re there as he begs a restaurateur to hand over the pizza that was supposed to be ready 10 minutes ago. We’re there as he sprints for the bus that will take him to the homeless shelter for the night. We’re there in the wee hours of the morning when his phone alarm wakes him so he can book a bed in that very same shelter for the night to come.
It’s a tough, tough life, and Souleymane can barely catch a break. He’s renting an online delivery account from a shady guy called Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie), and has to sprint back to him occasionally for facial verification; in return, Emmanuel takes close to half his meagre earnings. Occasional moments of kindness from strangers or support workers sprinkle like fairy dust on an existence that is otherwise relentlessly harsh.
Abou Sangaré is magnificent as Souleymane. A first-time actor, he won the best newcomer Cesar last year, as well as the best actor award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes (where the film also won the Jury Prize). He is on screen for virtually every second, and he holds your attention without fail.
Never, though, does he stoop to pathos. Souleymane is a fighter, even if he sometimes struggles to know what he’s fighting for. He’s left behind the woman he loves, he’s living in abject poverty, he doesn’t even have time to trade good-natured nationalist rivalries with a bunch of Ivorian riders. “What am I even doing in France,” he asks at one point, and it’s a fair question.
One answer is that he’s filling a gap in the labour market. The poorly paid, unprotected precariat is an essential part of the modern economy, here as much as in France (and in the US, despite Donald Trump’s campaign against it). It’s a rotten truth, but the system demands a constant supply of undocumented migrants if we are to get our pizzas and burgers and sushi delivered cheaply.
The Story of Souleymane doesn’t tackle that moral quandary head-on, just as it doesn’t make a case for or against its subject being granted asylum. But it unreservedly makes him human. And for that alone, Soulemayne demands to be treated with dignity, whatever his story.