Ten years after presenting Hope, his first feature film at Critics' Week, which won the SACD prize, French director Boris Lojkine was back on the Croisette with his new film L'Histoire de Souleymane, selected in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes 2024 Festival , where it won the Jury and Best Actor awards .
L'Histoire de Souleymane will be released in cinemas from October 9, 2024.
Synopsis: As Souleymane pedals through the streets of Paris delivering meals, he rehearses his story. In two days' time, he must attend his asylum interview, the key to obtaining papers. But Souleymane isn't ready.
At the crossroads of tragic destinies, the film recounts two days in the life of Souleymane (Abou Sangare), a Guinean bicycle delivery man preparing for his asylum interview, the key to obtaining papers to stay in France. As he pedals tirelessly through the streets of Paris delivering meals, Souleymane repeats a story that isn't his own (he's told he has to declare himself a political opponent to secure asylum), but he's not ready.
In an ultra-naturalistic style bordering on documentary, Boris Lojkine focuses on the people we don't see, even though we pass them in the street every day. These deliverymen on bicycles who roam the capital's affluent areas, penetrating no further than the halls of apartment buildings, and whom no one really looks in the eye when they pick up their order.
Souleymane's journey is full of pitfalls, and continues after he crosses the border into France, at the end of a journey that puts his life at risk. The director details everything about Souleymane's daily life: the galloping to catch the metro, the RER and the bus that drops him off at a reception center, the calls to the 115 as soon as he wakes up to ensure a warm place to stay that evening, the perversion of certain clients - it's hard not to think that some of these interactions could be filmed on hidden camera - and the terrorizing police...
But perhaps the hardest thing is the inhumanity shown by minorities to one another, when it comes to exploiting their fellow man by subletting an account on delivery apps at a high price, and making money from undocumented migrants. A series of miserable situations, but despite it all, Souleymane holds his head high, thanks to a masterly performance by Abou Sangare.
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