Avis des critiques

Boris Lojkine’s drama is a work of bone-deep empathy that doubles as nail-biting suspense, all of which it suggests is the norm for hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. The film benefits immeasurably from the lead performance of Abou Sangaré.

[Souleymane's Story] walks a thin line between teasing out the fraught psychological experience of its protagonist and universalizing this experience as grand commentary on the powers that have licensed it, and, for the most part, it delivers outstandingly.

Souleymane’s Story hits hard because it lives from moment to moment and tells a story that could easily be unfolding anywhere in the world right now... Souleymane’s Story is so locked into the moment and the frantic nature of the situation at hand that it hardly feels directed at all, which is a high compliment for a film that thrives on feeling realistic.

The film’s considerable power depends entirely on its moment-to-moment persuasiveness, on a set of narrative and aesthetic choices that, as presented—in a series of swift, kinetically composed, and jaggedly edited scenes—seldom feel like choices at all.

The experience is immersive and insightful, akin to revered neorealist films, but it strives so hard for verisimilitude that it comes up short as a truly satisfying cinematic experience.

Souleymane is not an idealized vision of an immigrant, but a complex man with flaws who makes numerous mistakes in his quest for papers. That doesn’t make him any less deserving of asylum, just all the more painfully real; it also makes Souleymane’s Story all the more important a film.

The film makes it impossible for us to see [Souleymane] as just another name on a list for the government to place a “yes” or a “no” next to. Whether his undeniable humanity will have an effect on his fate is another question entirely, however.

[Souleymane's Story] is the rare character study that does not only build empathy with its hero’s pain but channels its sensation... Lojkine tells his story in the key of subtlety and raw feeling. He steers clear of sentimentality, instead showing the indispensability of mutual support in quotidian interactions.

“Souleymane’s Story” doesn’t blaze any trails that we haven’t seen before, and it sometimes gets too deep in the weeds of French immigration law for its own good, trading too much universality for specificity when a little less detail would have made the same point more effectively.

“Souleymane’s Story,” an intimate, handsome rendering of his [protagonist's] troubles, serves as both his aching statement and a biting critique of an unjust immigration system... Lojkine and Delphine Agut’s considerate script is sympathetic and discerning about how much of Souleymane’s pain we must swim through.

Souleymane’s Story delivers a political fable with all the grit and urgency of a thriller... Since the Dardenne brothers’ win with Rosetta in 1999, at least four Palme d’Ors have gone to titles of Rosetta‘s ilk, but that style of filmmaking has become desperately unfashionable. Souleymane suggests there may be life in it yet.

Souleymane’s Story employs the meticulous handheld cinematography popularized by the Dardennes. It’s a style that other films have imitated to lesser effect, but here it feels earned, echoing the fluid, restless motion of Souleymane’s life.