Souleymane’s Story got lots of love on the festival circuit and made it onto quite a number of the Best Of 2025 lists. And yet it’s about the immigrant experience. I say “And yet” because, face it, your heart sinks a bit at the prospect of watching some poor sap having a relentlessly terrible time at the hands of the authorities. Director Boris Lojkine clearly understands that too, and has decided that the way to persuade audiences to watch his film is to give them energy and thriller vibes. An Uncut Gems of the French sans papiers is the result.
It’s a familiar story, following Souleymane (Abou Sangaré), who works as a food-delivery cycle courier in Paris while waiting for the immigration people to grant him leave to remain in the country. Lojkine follows him through the daily slog, of work, being tutored in the best story to tell the authorities, trying to extract money from people who owe it to him, to pay other people he owes money to, sleeping in an out-of-town hostel and so on. Meanwhile, back at home in West Africa, there’s the fiancée he’s left behind and is probably going to have to dump as graciously as he can manage via Zoom, plus a sick mother.
All these strands threaded together by the frenzied rush of the bike courier weaving through the city at speed, mostly at night, delivering food before it gets cold, waiting testily outside restaurants who don’t have his order ready, arguing and laughing with other couriers. There is a camaraderie and also a rivalry. It’s frantic, noisy, dangerous, occasionally aggressive, the nighttime zip of the city matching Souleymane’s state of permanent agitation.
All roads lead to the eventual interview where Souleymane will tell his story. Or, rather, one mostly concocted by Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), who assures him that the spin he’s added about Souleymane’s political affiliations is the right one – Souleymane would rather just tell the real story, but Barry tells him that won’t wash.
Energy, desperate energy, is what the film is about, conveyed brilliantly by Lojkine and his DP Tristan Galand, who shot the courier scenes by following Sangaré on bikes.
Its heart comes from Sangaré, who had no acting experience when he was cast. His story – seven years in France after arriving as a teenager – is pretty much the story of Souleymane. It helps that Sangaré is a handsome man with strong features. Though he has his flaws, Souleymane is a decent human being struggling to keep things that way, and Sangaré (also Souleymane’s surname) really conveys that.
The acting medals are earned in the one-on-one scenes, whether it’s getting into a scrap with the more established Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie) over money, or in the climactic scene being interviewed by a French official (Nina Meurisse), where Sangaré shifts Souleymane’s emotional state little by little from guarded through confident to panicked. It’s brilliantly done.
Roger Ebert’s dictum that the movies are an empathy machine applies maximally here. Souleymane is a nice man having a bad time, whose prospects are in the hands of other people. He has no control over his life and when it comes to the few decisions he can make – whether to go with Barry’s concocted story, for instance – he cannot get his bearings and doesn’t have enough information even to make an intelligent guess. It’s fraught, white-knuckle stuff.
We never see what happens to Souleymane in the end, though the atmosphere has gradually shifted from hectic to hopeless. The sense of doom is so intense that I, for one, was glad when the movie ended. In a good way.
Souleymane’s Story – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
