Irregular migration and stymied deportation orders have long loomed over French politics, issues that were exploited in recent elections by a far-right eager to stoke fears, reports The Guardian.
Now an award-winning film is amplifying the voices of those who have long been shut out of the conversation: undocumented migrants themselves.
“It’s been quite fun,” said Abou Sangaré, who plays the lead role in L’Histoire de Souleymane, or Souleymane’s Story. “We’ve had tonnes of requests for interviews, from radio to television.”
The film, which casts Sangaré as a young asylum seeker, unfolds at a frenetic pace as he races to cobble together an income as a delivery rider and prepare for a make-or-break interview to secure residency papers.
For Sangaré – who won best actor in the Cannes film festival’s Un Certain Regard competition for his performance – the film is a blend of fiction and his own reality; since arriving in France at the age of 16 from Guinea, he has lacked permanent legal status, leaving him, like thousands of others in France, fighting deportation.
Sangaré’s life changed after he met the film-maker Boris Lojkine. After several auditions, the 23-year-old was cast as Souleymane, catapulting him from a life in the shadows to having his face splashed across movie posters at subway stations and bus stops across France.
It also propelled him into the middle of the country’s heated debate on migration. Last week the film was screened at France’s national assembly, earning plaudits even after far-right politicians moaned about Sangaré being cast in the film and France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, vowed to crack down on irregular migration and do more to expel those without permanent legal status.
Leftwing politicians were swift to trumpet the film’s humanisation of an issue that has long hovered over French politics in an abstract way. “See this film and get others to see it so that all the Souleymanes, all the undocumented workers, all the Uberised delivery riders are finally recognised: regularised and salaried,” Danielle Simonnet of the New Popular Front wrote on social media after the screening. “Our humanity depends on it.”