The story of Souleymane (Abou Sangare), a Guinean immigrant fighting for the right to work legally in France, has lately been told millions of times, a tale spun through a web of iterations, clichés, and on occasion outright lies. And yet Boris Lojkine’s third feature, Souleymane’s Story, soldiers on, unconcerned with both the statistical macrocosm of asylum-seeking in Europe and the dramaturgical tropes that have, since the neorealist school and then later the Dardennes, sought to sensationalize it. The film walks a thin line between teasing out the fraught psychological experience of its protagonist and universalizing this experience as grand commentary on the powers that have licensed it, and, for the most part, it delivers outstandingly.
Still fresh-faced from a laborious journey through Africa but acclimatized long enough to the Parisian suburbs to take up a food delivery gig illegally subcontracted out, Souleymane works days and nights on the streets, a fleeting and transient presence hawking sustenance and convenience on bike to the city’s denizens. Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie), the owner of his account, takes a cut of Souleymane’s earnings each week, often paying the remainder late. This is only one of Souleymane’s many worries, though; the delivery app requires an identity verification from time to time, so he has to shuttle at breakneck speed between orders and arrondissements to reach his employer. Accidents aren’t insured, because he’s working illegally. Slow kitchens reduce the number of deliverable orders. The customer at the end of the chain is king, wielding a star rating and complaint button as knife and fork. Quashed amidst all this, Souleymane hustles, fighting a grueling battle day in and day out.
The light at the end of the tunnel is a meeting with French bureaucracy, who will hear Souleymane’s plight of immigration and then decide whether or not to grant him a work visa. To prepare for the meeting, he enlists a broker named Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), whose expertise is in vetting and providing cover stories to his (mostly African) immigrant clients. Having lived a very different kind of life prior, Souleymane struggles to internalize the compendium of facts and fictions within a sob story of political oppression. In addition, between him and potential freedom stands a gap to be bridged with more money, without which Barry has no incentive to produce the requisite documents proving Souleymane’s status as the “security secretary” of an evictee union.
Lojkine’s camera, helmed by Tristan Galand, engenders a frenetic atmosphere around the film’s titular figure, whose person and perseverance rarely come close to embracing narrative stereotypes. A gentle empathy is afforded Souleymane, both the victim of an exploitative and thoroughly dehumanizing system and the steadfast, believable individual determined to play its game. Souleymane’s Story harbors moments of little respite: the somewhat superficial camaraderie of its African immigrant communities (whose participants hail from different countries), the small kindness of strangers, the relief of having just made it through another day. These moments are of course not enough. Pending a visa, immigrants like Souleymane ballot for spots at homeless shelters on a daily basis. They may find work illicitly as couriers, but even then the crushing pressures of capitalism and the soullessness of job precarity will wear them down. When the day of the meeting finally comes, Souleymane sits before his interlocutor (Nina Meurisse) and recounts his story. Part of it comes out of his mouth, as what he says; part of it is written on his furrowed brow, his weary cheeks, his very being.
DIRECTOR: Boris Lojkine; CAST: Abou Sangaré, Nina Meurisse, Alpha Oumar Sow, Emmanuel Yovanie; DISTRIBUTOR: Kino Lorber; IN THEATERS: August 1; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 32 min.
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