Interview: Boris Lojkine – Souleymane’s Story

After winning the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the Best Actor award for first-time performer Abou Sangare at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the film went on to receive numerous further awards and accolades over the course of the year (well into 2025). At its core, Souleymane’s Story explores the invisible labor and existential precarity of undocumented migrants in modern Europe and how capitalism and state systems discipline migrant bodies. Blurring of fiction and the documentary form, Lojkine’s work (2014’s Hope, 2019’s Camille) focuses on marginalized, isolated individuals and Souleymane’s Story extends these concerns with its hyper-focused gritty visual strategy (plus outstanding street soundscape that punctuates the psychological state of the person and city) and ethical realist approach. The small obstacles, repeated failures and minor humiliations our delivery service antihero encounters add up. During our sit-down we talked about the soundscape, my favorite sequence, and the amount of research needed (including the French immigration worker part played by Nina Meurisse). Kino Lorber released the film back in August.