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Join Telegram ChannelForty-eight hours in the life of an undocumented migrant before knowing if he will be authorized to stay in France. A race against time that combines dizzying truthfulness and incredible emotional power.
He succeeded in the performance, in a Cannes festival where the race for the Palme always crushes everything, to exist strongly there although presented outside of the competition. Then he won over the audience at the Angoulême French-speaking film festival with the same fervor. Discovered on the Croisette and seen again in the Charentaise city, our enthusiasm for this third feature-length fiction film by Boris Lojkine has only grown, confirming the irresistible rise to power of this filmmaker who came from documentary after hope (2014), a heartbreaking work on African immigration to Europe via the eventful journey across their continent of a Nigerian and a Cameroonian and Camille (2019), remarkable film on war journalism through the tragic fate of Camille Lepage who lost her life covering a conflict in the Central African Republic.
With The Story of Souleymanethis time the filmmaker depicts two decisive days in the life of a Guinean who fled his country, a bicycle deliveryman in the streets of Paris. Forty-eight hours before having an interview which will decide whether or not their asylum application will be accepted. Lojkine therefore films here one of those that we all meet in the street every day, without giving them a glance. In 93 minutes without downtime, the film conveys the permanent tension that the latter must face. The constant race for everything: the anxiety of a ride being refused by a customer because of a few minutes of delay, the fear of missing the last evening bus which takes you to a shelter otherwise you will sleep on the street, the constant fear that we discover that he does not carry out his shopping with his real identity but that of another who lends him his in exchange for a percentage of his meager income, making him obligated. This race against time is reminiscent of that orchestrated by Eric Gravel in Full time where the single mother played by Laure Calamy tried to juggle with difficulty between her job as a maid, her children and her interviews to land a new job in a Paris blocked by strikes.
There is no trace of demonstration or sentimentalism in Lojkine's writing and production. A thousand miles from a sociopolitical melodrama, The Story of Souleymane first and foremost tells the story of a quest for identity. That of a man who left his life, the woman of his dreams and his sick mother to offer them a better future and finds himself exploited and crushed by a consumer society which takes advantage of him as much as it can before to throw it away and go after another. A character that Lojkine never takes his eyes off, thus giving him back an existence and by extension a humanity while everything pushes him to escape the gaze of others, all assimilated to a potential threat. A great film played by an immense non-professional actor (like 99% of the cast with the exception of Nina Meurisse, already heroine of Camille), Abou Sangaré, himself, in real life, in search of regularization which was refused to him… a few days after receiving the acting prize from the Cannes Un Certain Regard section. When reality and fiction come together.
By Boris Lojkine. With Abou Sangare, Nina Meurisse, Alpha Oumar Sow… Duration 1h33. Released October 9, 2024