Suleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
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It’s All in the “Story”
It’s 75 years later, and the need still resonates: for a bicycle that allows one to have a job paying very little but something, the need that to this day crushes the underclasses in modern, wealthy economies. Instead of post-WWII sign-hanger Antonio on the outskirts of Rome anxious to provide for his wife and children, in Boris Lojkine’s gripping “Suleymane’s Story,” Suleymane is a single asylum seeker in the asphalt jungle of contemporary Paris, trying to earn enough to help his mother in Africa survive. “She gave me life. I have to give her something in return.”
Guinean Suleymane (Abou Sangare) madly bicycles through the Paris streets at night, delivering restaurant meals to earn enough money to pay for the "story"
he needs for his asylum interview.
Guinean-born Abou Sangare, a mechanic and asylum-seeker recruited for the title role, is as riveting in his character’s unrelenting pursuit as was Lamberto Maggiorani, the factory worker turned actor in Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Bicycle Thieves. Both non-professional actors demand our attention and capture our imagination in a way stars cannot; one completely forgets they are other than who they are on screen.
Suleymane is trapped in an exploitative underworld that offers a narrow path to asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be settled.
From the initial scenes, we understand Suleymane’s goal is asylum in France, for which he must have documents and undergo a recorded interview where he has to tell a credible and compelling political story. Brilliant camerawork follows the immigrant through the crowded streets of Paris—no bombastic music, just street sounds—as he madly speeds through red lights, from restaurant to apartment building, delivering food to those who live and eat well above his station, who can afford to keep him waiting—and do. He’s trapped in an exploitative underworld that offers a narrow path to asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be settled. He must “rent” another immigrant’s delivery account. He must pay yet another immigrant for documents—and for his story.
Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), right, is the fellow immigrant
who will supply Suleymane (Sangare) with a political story.
Suleymane is a hard-working, determined, nose-to-the-grindstone young man. Yet he’s under constant pressure to meet deadlines and make more money than seems humanly possible in his circumstances, while being demeaned and goaded by those who want even more out of him. All this in France, a country with a reputation for humane treatment of immigrants, one with a support system offering food, showers, and bunk beds for these men (provided they have a reservation and can catch the train and bus to a location far from the city center).
Tension pervades the film from start to finish, whether it’s the possible loss of his bicycle (as in De Sica’s version), maltreatment at the hands of an arrogant white restaurateur (played by the director), physical abuse from a fellow immigrant, or his anxiety at telling a made-up story at his interview, scheduled to take place 48 hours after we first meet him. Will Suleymane successfully lie, or be found out and denied asylum? Deadlines, money pressures, any small act that goes awry (missing the bus to the exurbs and having to sleep on the streets) could jeopardize his goal: to get to the other side of the all-important interview. Nothing is easy.
Suleymane’s grueling existence is interspersed with moments of levity and tenderness (Sangare, right).
French director Lojkine’s excellent script, co-written with Delphine Agut, avoids melodrama. Suleymane’s grueling existence is interspersed with moments of levity and tenderness: the good-natured ribbing among immigrants from different countries; the small acts of kindness he encounters on the job—a free coffee, a strawberry candy, an aging customer who takes an interest in him; a middle-of-the-night telephone call with his girlfriend back home. He’s not alone in his needs. When more recent immigrants ask him for help, the West African has nothing left to give.
The constant tension throughout—down to the twitching of Suleymane’s head and hair as he tells his story—is almost unbearable.
In this nouveau realist tale, Lojkine, through Sangare, drags the viewer through the burdens of poverty, of class, of resources out of one’s reach, of the needs of the immigrant. Seventy-five years ago in Italy and today in France, Antonio and Suleymane lead lives of frustration, of quiet (and not so quiet) desperation. The constant tension throughout—down to the twitching of Suleymane’s head and hair as he tells his story—is almost unbearable.
The US government’s current hostility to immigrants of any kind, including asylum seekers, makes “Suleymane’s Story” all the more powerful.
She says: You may think you’ve seen this story before; you haven’t.
He says: A can’t-look-away performance by Abou Sangare.
Date: 2024 (2025 US release date)
Director: Boris Lojkine
Starring: Abou Sangare, Alpha Oumar Sow
Country: France
Languages: French and African languages, including Malinka (spoken in Guinea), subtitled in English
Runtime: 93 minutes
Other Awards: 17 wins, including at the Cannes Film Festival, the French César Awards, and the European Awards, and 17 other nominations.