Reviews
Souleymane's Story
Reviewed by Ian Payne
For a business in Paris, Souleyman should be the ideal employee. Hard working, utterly driven and honest.
The trouble is that Souleymane is an asylum seeker and cannot legally work. Living night by night in homeless hostels, he rents the legitimate account of a bicycle food delivery rider and spends his days criss-crossing the boulevards of Paris, dicing with death in the madness of the capital’s traffic, captured with some breathtaking cinematography.
With no rights, Souleymane is ripe for exploitation; by the owner of the delivery account who takes a third of his earnings and withholds even more and the fixer who provides him with a cover story to recount at his impending asylum interview. Even so, Souleymane is not at the bottom of the food chain – he has a bike and access to work. New arrivals have an even bigger mountain to climb.
Souleymane's phone is central to his existence, telling him when and where to be and directing him around the city. His daily life is dominated by scanners, PIN codes, requests for ID – a problem when the account is not his. His phone is his link to home, to his ill mother and the girl he loves but cannot afford to marry.
Souleymane exists, just about, in the modern gig economy, a frightening underclass of people who make the 'see it now, want it now' culture possible. He is constantly spinning plates. Amid the frenetic activity of the day, small acts of kindness stand out – the gift of a candy or cup of coffee affirms Souleyman's connection with the wider world. In his concern for the welfare of an elderly client, he takes time out of his schedule, in the knowledge he would have to pedal even faster for the rest of the day.
Those plates start to wobble as his asylum interview approaches and we see him injured and in a borrowed shirt trying to make his case. Souleymane's real story is both grim and heartbreaking in equal measure and told with huge emotion by the superb Abou Sangare, an untrained actor and a migrant himself in the not-too-distant past.
A thought provoking film that demonstrates that behind the headlines and hyperbole, there are real human stories to be told.
The trouble is that Souleymane is an asylum seeker and cannot legally work. Living night by night in homeless hostels, he rents the legitimate account of a bicycle food delivery rider and spends his days criss-crossing the boulevards of Paris, dicing with death in the madness of the capital’s traffic, captured with some breathtaking cinematography.
With no rights, Souleymane is ripe for exploitation; by the owner of the delivery account who takes a third of his earnings and withholds even more and the fixer who provides him with a cover story to recount at his impending asylum interview. Even so, Souleymane is not at the bottom of the food chain – he has a bike and access to work. New arrivals have an even bigger mountain to climb.
Souleymane's phone is central to his existence, telling him when and where to be and directing him around the city. His daily life is dominated by scanners, PIN codes, requests for ID – a problem when the account is not his. His phone is his link to home, to his ill mother and the girl he loves but cannot afford to marry.
Souleymane exists, just about, in the modern gig economy, a frightening underclass of people who make the 'see it now, want it now' culture possible. He is constantly spinning plates. Amid the frenetic activity of the day, small acts of kindness stand out – the gift of a candy or cup of coffee affirms Souleyman's connection with the wider world. In his concern for the welfare of an elderly client, he takes time out of his schedule, in the knowledge he would have to pedal even faster for the rest of the day.
Those plates start to wobble as his asylum interview approaches and we see him injured and in a borrowed shirt trying to make his case. Souleymane's real story is both grim and heartbreaking in equal measure and told with huge emotion by the superb Abou Sangare, an untrained actor and a migrant himself in the not-too-distant past.
A thought provoking film that demonstrates that behind the headlines and hyperbole, there are real human stories to be told.