Abou Sangare Delivers A Break-Out Performance In ‘Souleymane’s Story’ (2024)
- Hania Ahmed
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, 2024) is a French language film following breakout star Abou Sangare as Souleymane, an asylum-seeker from Guinea. This film follows Souleymane through the 48-hour period before his citizenship interview where he must revise a fabricated story sold to him by Barry, a “social worker” who helps him prepare documents and memorise dates.
The question this movie asks at its core is, “Who has the right to stay?”, or further: “Who has been hurt enough to deserve a better life?”. Director Boris Lojkine refuses to take the easy way out with Souleymane’s story: he does not paint a picture of a politically oppressed man who must flee to France in search of a better life. He presents Souleymane’s life in France to us with three layers: the asylum-seeking delivery driver; the homeless refugee preparing for a citizenship interview away from his family; and the broken man in search of a way to provide for those he cares about.
The film is shot mostly at night: nighttime blue and streetlight yellow suffuse the screen, and the sense of isolation becomes magnified in an empty city. In an interview with Cannes, Lojkine states that the idea from the film came from lockdown: “During lockdown, the streets were empty and all you saw was [delivery drivers].”
Kindness is offered to Souleymane by individual people: a server gives him a piece of candy, a man helps him when he falls down – but the system that pushes Souleymane to do deliveries at risk of losing a place to sleep hovers over the film ominously. There’s a sense by people outside of Souleymane’s bubble that the good, well-meaning immigrants will get their comeuppance in the form of French citizenship, and that those who get rejected are not legitimate or worth being concerned about. Instead of performing an exotic oppression for the Western gaze, Lojkine allows us to identify with Souleymane through everyday obstacles. Through this, we discover his true story: a man with a sick mother, a girlfriend who he must let go and a need to prove himself.
The interview weighs more heavily on Souleymane and consequently, the viewer, as the film continues. Souleymane listens to a voice note of his false story on repeat, nags various people for details about their interviews, and negotiates with his “social worker” for his documentation. The film’s shots centre Souleymane and rarely deviate: focusing on his micro-expressions and everyday demeanour. It is easy to see why Abou Sangare won the Cannes Best Actor award for his performance in this film; always positioned perfectly between the dramatic struggles of an asylum seeker and the performance of normality for the gaze of others.
The viewer truly empathises with him as a sort of everyday man who differs from the people he delivers food to in one key way: his lack of citizenship. This movie seems to ask us through Souleymane’s various confrontations and struggles, “How much does his citizenship matter, if at all?”
This film raises tensions to a peak during Souleymane’s citizenship interview with an immigration officer, played by Nina Meurisse who rightly won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in this role. Long after the movie ended, I found myself reflecting on her performance as the most humanising and simultaneously hair-raising in the entire film. Instead of portraying her as a villain, or even a hero, Meurisse skilfully depicts her character with a mix of genuine empathy and frustration.
Souleymane’s Story (2024) contains an important political message for us all. It asks who we sympathise with and to what extent. What trauma must an immigrant perform before we accept their plight for a better life? I believe Lojkine successfully portrays the complexities of the French immigration system – and humanises those who it discards.
Edited by Hannah Tang, Co-Editor of Film & TV
