L'histoire de Souleymane

Directed by Boris Lojkine, this film traces two days in the life of an African immigrant in Paris who works as a bike messenger delivering food. Although the film is fictional, it has a documentary "feel" to it. But the film's heightened suspense comes from the dramatization of his daily struggles. And everything is a struggle and there is much that is working against him, not least his color and his lack of resources. Because he is applying to become legal, and does not yet possess work papers to make what little money he earns he is forced to borrow, at an extortionate rate, another bicycle messenger's license. The film owes much to the great nineteenth-century tradition of naturalism where the protagonist finds himself or herself pitted against a pitiless system. But the film adds a twist to the time-honored formula. A close-to-the-bone rendering of the small daily struggles of immigrants: doesn't seem like the stuff of a thriller. But it is.