(courtesy IMDb)
When did compassion become a dirty word?
In our modern age of plenty and digital connectivity when we should be feeling that we are more of a community than not, humanity is pulling up the drawbridge and staring stonily, and often with bristling, cruel hatred, at those looking for safety and sanctuary in a world not exactly awash in it.
True, the broad swathe of our blighted history as a species would suggest we have always been better at violence and destruction than empathy and concern, but after the horrific events of World War Two, when a new spirit of optimism and shared humanity prevailed, we dared to dream, for a few decades at least, that we were all one, joint inhabitants of a finite planet.
But then the 21st century arrived, and all that optimism vapourised into tribal digital neighbourhoods and venomous parochialism which is where Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) sets itself, as the Boris Lojkine-directed, to a screenplay co-written with Delphine Agut, tells the story one Guinean immigrant seeking a better life in Paris, France.
By any measure, Souleymane (Abou Sangaré) has it tough.
He is barely squeaking by in his new life in Europe, his sole income coming from delivering food as part of the gig economy, and whatever limited income he makes eaten into heavily by an extortionate fee he must pay to fellow immigrant, Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie) for use of his delivery license.
He cannot afford food or accommodation, with his bed and breakfast provided by homeless shelters who provide transport to their facilities but only if you make the very strict departure times, which for a host of reasons Souleymane rarely does.
He does have friends but no real time to spend with them because he is always desperately riding, riding, riding on his bike to the next delivery to people who are nice enough but who have no idea that their convenient meal is another fevered instalment in their delivery guy’s quest for a better life.
While he is riding his heart out to make some money to barely get by, Souleymane is trying to get all his papers together for his asylum hearing, coached by Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), who is both supportive and avaricious too, charging a fortune for the fake papers his clients need to have any chance of being granted asylum, and who crafts them stories, which are supposed to be tailored to the individual but which are used time and again, ultimately dooming the very people who are at the mercy of a system that spots chinks in the armour of their storytelling and rejects them for it.
Set in what feels like real time, Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) viscerally brings the desperate life of immigrants alive in vivid and often distressing detail as we witness how hard it is to find a much-dreamt of new life in what was supposed to be paradise.
Any idea that people like Souleymane are on some magic carpet ride to lavish lives and indulgent opportunity is soundly put to bed by a movie which does not stint on the almost unsurmountable obstacles facing each and every asylum applicant.
Leaving aside the asylum interview itself, which plays out in some intensely emotional ways as an OFPRA (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) agent, played by Nina Meurisse, grills Souleymane, with some sort of weary compassion, what faces people like our titular protagonist is that this new life is, in some ways, not the one they really want.
While conservative, often brutally heartless opponents of the refugee process decry people like Souleymane as soulless opportunists only intent on stealing a small sliver of European prosperity for themselves, the truth is that a great many, if not all, of the refugees would rather be back at home with those they love.
Sure, they want a better life, and the West definitely offers that in a material sense, but their hearts remain in their home countries, demonstrated with so much powerful, heart-tearing humanity by the frequent conversations Souleymane has with his mentally ill mother and his girlfriend, Kadiatou (Keita Diallo) whom he clearly loves and wants to be with but which circumstances have rendered an impossibility.
She has even been offered the prospect of a reasonably comfortable marriage by an engineer in Guinea, and while she is reluctant to take it, Souleymane initially says she should take it as he realises, with pain and regret in his voice and eyes, that he is so far away, geographically and materially, from being able to offer he and Kadiatou the life they both want.
The great soaring strength of Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) is that it humanises refugees in a way that helps you understand like never before what it means for someone to get up their home and innate sense of place and to seek something supposedly better in a country far, far away from the world they’ve always known.
It’s clear that Souleymane would rather be home with Kadiatou and his mother, but that he has made the decision to come to France and that he must make it work because his options otherwise are scane to non-existent.
But the system doesn’t make it easy and this beautiful soul is caught between a home he can’t return to, not easily anyway – the cost to do so makes these sorts of asylum attempts essentially a one-way ticket – and a country that makes it near-impossible for him to belong.
The chilling humanity in Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) rends your heart in two (assuming you have one to begin with, which, sadly, is not always the case) as Lojkine simply but powerfully demonstrates what it takes to keep “paradise” and whether it might be more hell than heaven after all.
There are layers of complex truth baked into this nuanced and relatively straightforward story and raw emotion, especially in the film’s searing and increasingly emotionally frantic second half, aplenty, and the ending of Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) leaves with the sobering sense that there are rarely the kinds of endings to stories that anyone wants.
Superbly paced, beautifully written and with its heart very much on its sleeve (but in any kind of mawkish way; these are real emotions at play and they don’t need manipulative sleight-of-hand to affect you), Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane) is a wake-up call to the West’s increasingly dormant compassion and humanity, reminding us that refugees are people too with lives behind and before them, which we can either help or hinder depending on how we choose to treat them.