Souleymane's Story

Boris Lojkine's Souleymane's Story (French: L'Histoire de Souleymane) won the Jury Prize and the Best Actor prize at Cannes' Un Certain Regard in 2024 — both major recognitions, the latter awarded to Abou Sangare, a non-professional Guinean actor whose own immigration status in France was unresolved at the time of the festival. The casting and the prize led directly to a public campaign for his regularisation; the French interior ministry granted him residency in February 2025.

At the 50th César Awards in early 2025, Sangare won both Best Actor and Most Promising Actor — only the second time in Césars history any actor has won both prizes in the same year (the first was the singer Jacques Dutronc in 1989). Sangare also won Best Actor at the Lumière Awards 2025. Lojkine — a former philosophy teacher who had directed Hope (2014) and Camille (2019) — has worked consistently with non-professional African actors throughout his career.

The film was shot guerrilla-style in Paris over three weeks in late 2023, following Sangare on a real bicycle through real Uber Eats and Deliveroo deliveries; many of the supporting performers and customers in shots are non-actors caught on the run. Cinematography is by Tristan Galand and the script was co-written by Lojkine with Delphine Agut. It is now widely cited alongside Andrea Arnold's American Honey and the Dardennes' Rosetta as a key reference point for 2020s European naturalism on the working class.