Souleymane’s Story: a Guinean in Paris seeks the perfect tale to secure asylum in Boris Lojkine’s affecting migration drama
The French director centres the plight of Souleymane (Abou Sangaré), an asylum seeking bicycle courier fighting to survive in contemporary Paris.
Migration has become a prominent topic in recent cinema as Europe responds to the ongoing migrant crisis. Filmmakers have adopted a range of approaches, from Ai Weiwei’s wide angle in Human Flow (2017) to Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed’s astonishing first-person perspective in Purple Sea (2021). Boris Lojkine’s Paris-set Souleymane’s Story is a propulsive addition to the canon, following a few days in the life of its protagonist as he works tirelessly to makes ends meet and prepares to deliver a fabricated story of political imprisonment back home in Guinea to justify to the French authorities his claim for asylum.
Souleymane (Abou Sangaré) is being coached to tell his tale by Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), who he is paying to teach him what to say. The picture they’re painting is of someone driven into exile by state oppression; fascinatingly, and a little disarmingly, this story is quickly revealed as a fiction, pushing Souleymane into the realms of maligned stereotype. Lojkine and Delphine Agut’s script uses this to complicate their premise and create a nuanced picture of existence for someone living hand-to-mouth, hoping for leave to remain. Souleymane’s life is non-stop, gig after gig arriving on his phone with a familiar ping. The film doesn’t take big dramatic swings, instead allowing this succession of moments to gather emotional weight. They include kindness and menace, precarity and camaraderie.
At the centre is Abou Sangaré as Souleymane. Sangaré drew on his own experience of applying for permanent residence in France to bring authenticity to a scintillating performance which won him the Best Actor award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2024. He is magnetic in a role that continually requires him to be the camera’s focal point, often captured in mid-shot. The bustling city is frequently blurred into a haze of noise, light and motion around him, whether he’s rocketing on his bike or arguing with Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie), whose courier account he “borrows” so that he can work off the books.
Throughout, Sangaré layers on to the hard-working and likeable Souleymane a palpable fragility which evokes a difficult life, albeit one that doesn’t conform to the narratives demanded of asylum seekers. As the script teases out the details of what he’s been through, it acutely humanises this young single male who has come to Europe in a boat. The effect is profound; one can only hope that this fantastic film finds the audiences most in need of its message.
► Souleymane’s Story is in UK cinemas 17 October.