This French drama is one of the best films I've seen this year
★★★★½
M, 94 min
For many in the West, debates around immigration often involve a hierarchy of types: professional migrants and asylum seekers at the least problematic end of the spectrum, economic refugees with no clear humanitarian grounds to leave their homeland – accused of being queue jumpers and so despised by nationalists and right-wing populists – at the other.
The genius of The Story of Souleymane, one of the best films I've seen this year, is that it demolishes those distinctions. It is a tale about an asylum seeker whose case, on paper at least, is flimsy. But after spending a couple of days (condensed into a brisk and hyper-tense 93 minutes) with Souleymane, you can't help hoping for anything but the best for him.
Souleymane is a refugee from Guinea, working as a bicycle delivery rider in Paris, sleeping in a homeless shelter, and trying desperately to memorise the concocted story he is due to tell at his upcoming asylum hearing.
The film opens as he's called for his interview – he's dabbing at a spot of blood he's just noticed on the cuff of his borrowed white shirt – and then tracks him over the two days leading up to that moment.
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In its final heartbreaking scene, we move inside the interview room, where Souleymane desperately tries to convince his assessor (Nina Meurisse, who won a Cesar last year for her brief but touching performance) that he has a legitimate case to be offered succour by the state.
Director Boris Lojkine (who co-wrote with Delphine Agut) employs a verite style that keeps us close to Souleymane, often right up in his face. We're there as he pedals hard through the teeming streets, dodging buses and not always dodging vehicles. We're there as he begs a restaurateur to hand over the pizza that was supposed to be ready 10 minutes ago. We're there as he sprints for the bus that will take him to the homeless shelter for the night. We're there in the wee hours of the morning when his phone alarm wakes him so he can book a bed in that very same shelter for the night to come.
It's a tough, tough life, and Souleymane can barely catch a break. He's renting an online delivery account from a shady guy called Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie), and has to sprint back to him occasionally for facial verification; in return, Emmanuel takes close to half his meagre earnings. Occasional moments of kindness from strangers or support workers sprinkle like fairy dust on an existence that is otherwise relentlessly harsh.
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