It’s not every day that a film about an undocumented delivery man, whose main actor is not known, is released on more than a hundred copies. But The Story of SouleymaneBoris Lojkine’s third feature film, distributed by Pyramide, is a little different: this fiction is similar to a thriller, immersing yourself in the world of bicycle couriers, about which we know almost nothing.
The director, an associate professor of philosophy, born in 1969, takes the viewer closer to Souleymane (Abou Sangare), a Guinean delivery man with a complex profile. While running errands, the young man feverishly prepares his interview for his asylum application: Souleymane tries to remember the story that was made up for him, to enter the administration’s boxes, but which is not the his. He fears the misstep, breaks out in a cold sweat… The film received the Jury Prize at Un Certain Regard in Cannes, and won Best Actor for Abou Sangare, a professional mechanic, astonishing in his precision and emotion. .
In the cafe of a Parisian station, between two previews, Boris Lojkine explains this delicate choice of a migrant character who lies to obtain his papers. “I didn’t want a politically correct film, with the right asylum seeker. As if we didn’t have the right to have characters with a little depth, when it comes to migrants. I am not trying to be a spokesperson, I mainly want to tell the fascinating stories of these people”, explains the director.
“A big traumatized person”
In Cannes, Abou Sangare’s journey moved festival-goers. Born in 2001, in the south-east of Guinea, he has lived in Amiens for six years. He left his country to help his sick mother, who died after arriving in France. He enrolled in a professional heavy goods vehicle mechanic baccalaureate and suffered several refusals for a residence permit. “Abou is very traumatized”underlines the filmmaker. “After Cannes, this summer, the prefecture suggested that Abou submit a new application. This time, we have good hope, unless there is a counter-order from our new Minister of the Interior, which is not excluded”says the director, in an allusion to Bruno Retailleau’s statement – “Immigration is not an opportunity. » He adds, over his long coffee: “Anyway, we’re not going to give up. »
Boris Lojkine, jeans, fleece and backpack, became a filmmaker after leaving national education. He did not see himself spending his life in libraries like his parents, both academics, his mother a professor of English literature, his father a sociologist at the CNRS. “I entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure at the age of 19, I could already count my retirement points up to the age of 65… Suddenly, it scared me a little. »
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