‘Souleymane’s Story’ Review: French Immigration Drama


Everyone that Souleymane (Abou Sangare) meets has an angle. The Guinean immigrant is nothing if not a Hustler, who zips through Paris streets on his bike that makes food deliveries at all hours of the night to scrape up the funds to buy some asylum paper to present to PRA (the French office for the protection of refugees and stateless people). But while he has surrounded himself with a society of African immigrants who are theoretically willing to guide him through the process, everyone’s service comes with a price. And the services themselves are nothing to brag.

Without legal citizenship, he cannot make his own account on any of the food delivery apps – so an acquaintance is nice enough to let Souleymane use his and take 50 percent of revenue for his problems while Souleymane does 100 percent of the work. He also pays to be coached for his upcoming immigration interview, although he has given the questionable council to make SOB stories to be attacked by political enemies to get asylum – that is, when he is not shaken for even more money. Life is hard hard enough for an unequal, undocumented player for playing economics who are just trying to end the meeting, but his biggest problem may be the many of the Nickel Nickel and dimming him out of each penny he has.

Boris Lojkine’s new film “Souleymane’s Story” follows his named immigrant for two days leading up to his asylum interview with Ofpra. A simple social realistic drama, it invokes the traditions of films such as “I, Daniel Blake” and “Tori and Lokita” By illustrating the sisific tasks that vulnerable people can be submitted when they navigate the state bureaucrats that will obviously help them. But it also applies a modern touch to the sub -genre by placing the unique challenges like gig economy in front and mine.

Delivering food on their bike is the only form of income available to Souleymane, but compete through Paris traffic on Kalla, wet nights is the least of his problems. He painfully navigates slow restaurants, neat customers who cancel orders on a whim and older customers who do not understand the new security code system that his service has implemented. All of these external delays and constitute their grade with the app’s general algorithm, which can lead to shutdowns and delayed payments of money that he has already promised people all over the city. The delivery sequences are almost Sean Baker-Esque in its depictions of the ways poverty can turn the simplest of cases into a screw ball comedy when everything seems to go wrong for you every minute of the day.

“Souleyman’s story” is not burning any traces that we have not seen before, and it sometimes becomes too deep in the weeds in the French immigration law for its own good and acts too much universality for specificity when a little less detail would have made the same score more effectively. But it still delivers exactly what its title promises: a man’s story when he navigates in all the ups and downs in the two greatest days of his life before asking his case to stay in France. Sangare embodies the character with an appropriately abused resilience, while Lokjine and co -author Delphine Agut struck him with challenge after challenge that feels surprising and inevitable at the same time.

Sometimes Souleymane feels like he sprints through a race without a finish line, and sometimes he encounters an unmatched brick wall. The film is in space between the opposite results, and its contradictions become its greatest strength as it shows the endless fatigue of navigating in a system that does not care about you almost as much as it claims.

Rating: B-

A Kino Lorber release, “Souleymane’s Story” opens in theaters on Friday 1 August.

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