Souleymane’s Story

The title of Boris Lujkine’s French film is not a generic catch-call – as in, this is the story of Souleymane – but a specific reference to the asylum interview of the eponymous character (Abou Sangaré), a Guinean immigrant in Paris. The opening scene finds Souleymane waiting for that interview, harried in his air, a conspicuous wound on his forehead, and then flashes back 48 hours earlier to show us how he got here. That’s a thriller device, and though “Souleymane’s Story” is billed as a drama, like Eric Gravel’s sensational 2021 French thriller “Full Time,” Lujkine sculpts genuine suspense from nothing more than everyday details, the nightly bus that Souleymane must catch at a certain time back to a homeless shelter so he as a bed to sleep in, or else be resigned to the street, the orders he ferries as food delivery courier, and the precious state of the e-bike he uses to deliver them, all in the name of ginning up enough money to pay a so-called Fixer, Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), to outfit him with a phony story of political persecution back home to increase his asylum odds. That last one is an evocative detail rendering Souleymane’s desperate plight as existential, bolstered by his job in which he must pay to use the app of another delivery driver, masquerading as that person while working. And it’s why even if the typical kind of character details that might humanize Souleymane are scant, it’s all for a broader purpose, of demonstrating the dehumanization of the immigration process. When his asylum interview finally comes back around, you might know what’s coming, but the rendering is so gently forceful that is works in spite of the predictability, embodied in Nina Meurisse’s performance as the government agent conducting the interview who tells him with straightforward patience that this is his opportunity to tell his story. And finally, after over a frenzied hour, the movie stops, sits back, and gives Souleymane the floor, a sustained unburdening of the overwhelming stress that comes with concealing your true self.