Souleymane's Story

A film about forty-eight hours in Paris. Souleymane is a young man from Guinea. He delivers food by bicycle but does not have his own account; he rents another courier's and hands over part of what he earns. His asylum interview is in two days. He has to prepare: there is a story he has been taught, which he must memorise and deliver convincingly. But it is not his story. He is handling three things at once: earning enough to eat, finding somewhere to sleep, and preparing for that interview. For a bed he has to catch a particular bus at a particular hour every evening. The film shows those two days close to real time. Traffic, app notifications, late orders and small frictions with customers are the texture of the narrative. In the last section the interview arrives and the story opens somewhere else. Abou Sangaré plays Souleymane; he is not a professional actor and his own past was a source for part of the screenplay. Boris Lojkine directed. The film won jury and acting prizes at Cannes and Césars in France afterwards. A strong example for anyone who likes migration stories and realist cinema. For a viewer expecting incident, the film consists entirely of the pressure of daily life.