Director: Boris Lojkine

Stars: Abou Sangare, Alpha Oumar Sow, Nina Meurisse, Emmanuel Yovanie

Lojkine’s update on the neorealism genre a la Bicycle Thieves is an affecting and highly involving tale of a food delivery cycle rider in Paris. Hitherto non-professional actor Abou Sangare is the titular character, a Guinean working on a friend’s borrowed papers, while he is preparing for an interview with the authorities which will decide his citizenship status, and hopefully result in him getting a carte de séjour, which would allow him to live and work legally in France. At night he sleeps in a homeless shelter populated by broadly mutually supportive immigrants in the same boat. Most of his waking hours, Souleymane frantically cycles the streets of Paris delivering food, having to deal with unruly customers and an uncooperative restaurant owner, while trying to prepare for his pending interview, coached by an advisor who claims to know how to play the system. Souleymane’s colleagues are mainly fellow African immigrants whose badinage and camaraderie supply some of the film’s lighter moments. At the picture’s climax, an exhausted and battered Souleymane arrives at his appointment with a not unsympathetic immigration officer (Meurisse). Lojkine’s picture works not just as an insightful slice of social realism, but also as a gripping thriller, thanks in particular to some fast-paced editing and zippy photography which follows Souleymane around the Paris streets. The depiction of Souleymane’s hardscrabble existence is leavened with moments of humour and shared humanity, such as when police officers he is delivering food to, let him off more out of laziness than sympathy, and another when a restaurant worker hands him a free cup of coffee. First time actor Sangare is very impressive indeed.

David Willoughby

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