From the moment the film starts, Souleymane and the audience is constantly in motion. A journey is always taking place; from one side of Paris to the other, from one on-the-clock food delivery job to the hurried next, to the daily departure of a bus that is his only way to get a bed for the night, and all of the high-wire act that is needed to travel from one continent to another without formal papers, to cross over from an illegally- working asylum seeker, to a recognised resident of another country with the right to make a living.
In what is his third feature film (Hope, 2014, Camille, 2019), director Boris Lojkine, along with Aline Dalbis, has filled almost the entire cast with non- professional actors who had no on-screen experience. Instead, what they did have was plenty of real- life stories, and the script was revised to include many of the details of the lives of the largely Guinean delivery riders that fill the avenues of Paris, and whom the team discovered by immersing themselves in that community and scouting the streets.
The lead, Abou Sangare, was found in just this way whilst working as a mechanic without papers in the northern town of Amiens, and having lived a life on the edges of society since he arrived in France age 16. It is one thing for an actor to be able to draw on their own life, but Sangare brings an earnest intensity, whilst also delivering cinematic depth and arresting good looks. The camera eats up what ever he gives, and there is plenty to digest as Sangare is in every scene.
Souleymane’s life is played out on the busy, dark and dangerous Paris streets on a bicycle which he is continually riding at speed. The franticness of the traffic and the weaving in between cars to get to somewhere he was already meant to be is filmed brilliantly using two other bikes for sound and image.
Lojkine said, “To film Souleymane’s bike we used other bikes. It was the only way for us to slip into the traffic. One bike for the image, another for the sound. Most of the time, I rode the sound bike myself, to stay fully engaged in the shooting.”
Screening in the French Film Festival 2025
Winner Jury Prize – Un Certain Regard – Cannes Film Festival 2024
Winner Best Actor – Un Certain Regard – Cannes Film Festival 2024
Winner Fipresci Prize – Un Certain Regard – Cannes Film Festival 2024
Abou Sengare 2025 César for Best Male Newcomer
Director Boris Lojkine
Screenplay Boris Lojkine And Delphine Agut
Image Tristan Galand
Editing Xavier Sirven
Costumes Marine Peyraud
Production Manager Dimitri Lykavieris
Set Management Armel Kouassi
Post-Production Manager Astrid Lecardonnel
Casting Aline Dalbis
Produced By Bruno Nahon – Unité
Associate Producer Thomas Morvan
Starring Abou Sangare as Souleymane, Nina Meurisse as Agente de l’Ofpra, Alpha Oumar Sow as Barry, Emmanuel Yovanie as Emmanuel, Younoussa Diallo as Khalil,
Ghislain Mahan as Ghislain, Mamadou Barry as Mamadou, Yaya Diallo as Yaya
and Keita Diallo as Kadiatou
There is no sound in the film other than that of the city. No music, no soundtrack. The film doesn’t pause for a second keeping the intensity high and feeling like an action thriller, proving how fully invested the audience is in Souleymane reaching his next destination. Lojkine added, “I even wanted the complex dialogue scenes to be set at the heart of city life: in the train, in the middle of traffic, in a crowd, in the heart of the bubbling cauldron. My sound engineer (Marc-Olivier Brullé, with whom I worked for the third time) had to invent new ways to record sound, to meet the challenges of shooting in the midst of the city’s hustle and bustle.”
We meet the city head on, Souleymane and the other riders just touching the elegant doorways and the charming Parisian apartments that they deliver food to, largely ignored by the people they meet, treated badly by the restauranteurs who make them wait outside, and constantly judged and threatened by the anonymous app that holds their survival in it’s pings and swipes.
The driving narrative is Souleymane’s scheduled interview with an agent from the immigration department set for two days from the start of the film. The community of riders, and those at the shelter where he sleeps, talk with mythological reverence of those who have passed this test and those who have not. There are schemes and counter- schemes, and Souleymane puts his trust and his hard fought for Euros in the hands of those who seem to know what they are talking about. He practices a prepared script which has in it, he is told, the correct amount of torture, imprisonment and political activism that will get him his right to live and work freely.
He is taken advantage of by those who have come before him, scrabbling for the money to pay for his fake papers to attend the meeting to tell the lies that should be his ticket to freedom. Once in the interview room for the final scene, it feels like the terrible twists and turns of the film have all been worth it, but really another journey has only just begun. Its a stunning scene between the OFPRA agent, played by Nina Meurisse, and Souleymane, as they dance between compassion and rules, truth and lies, the pair of them hovering over the boundary of a country and the borders of a way of life. It’s a clever and poignant way to not only reveal Souleymane’s, which is also Sangare’s, true story, but to reveal the largesse of Sangare’s talent.
The director has said that he would not feel like he has finished the film until Abou Sangare was given the right to live and work in France. He had applied three times in the past and not been accepted, but since the release of the film he was invited to apply again by the French government. In January 2025 he was given a one year visa. In the same year, just a few weeks ago, he won a César for Best Male Newcomer. An extraordinary combination of achievements. Although he is being courted by the French film industry now, Sangare still describes himself as a mechanic, and has for the first time as an adult had some reprieve from the constant anxiety and stress of threatened deportation. There will no doubt be more opportunities to see him on screen, but hopefully, there’ll be many more years tagged onto his visa.
