"I had never heard the word casting before." Abou Sangare, a 23-year-old Guinean, has come to understand the true meaning and weight of words during the duration of the film The Story of Souleymane, directed by Boris Lojkine, in which he is the hero and protagonist. Words not only express, signify, or name things. Words are things. An undocumented immigrant, for example, is barely anything. "Being undocumented is like not existing... But still, we exist," he says. Last January, he finally obtained his residency permit in France. Up to that point, it had been denied to him three times, and he was under the obligation to leave French territory according to the protocol known by the acronym OQTF. Another strange, offensive, bitter, and bureaucratically sterile word that Sangare had to learn upon arriving in Europe. His story is that of many. He tells it himself in the film. When he faces the official who examines him to determine if he will be granted asylum or not, what starts as a bunch of empty, prepared, and memorized words to impress suddenly turns into a real story, into the certainty of words that weigh, hurt, that simply are.
Abou Sangare is now an actor, one of the most recognized performers in European cinema after being awarded at Cannes, the Cesar Awards, and the European Film Awards. And he is rightfully so. Despite the occasional coincidence, Souleymane's story, the character in the film, is not his own. In the movie, it tells the life of a delivery man on the streets of Paris. He runs from one place to another, always with little time, always on the verge of falling, of being rejected, of not making it, of being simply nothing. Without words. In his life, Sangare worked and still works as a truck mechanic in Amiens. "I never, not even remotely, dreamed of making a movie. My only childhood dream was to be a mechanic. And that's still what I want to be. My only aspiration has always been and is to be a normal, natural person. My goal is to preserve my dignity. And what is my dignity? To be respected by others and by myself," he comments while apologizing for almost everything: for coughing, for speaking too fast, for seeming arrogant, for not explaining himself clearly... "It can be said that our stories, Souleymane's and mine, are different, but they have the same background," he clarifies.
Sangare left his native Guinea in 2016. Before crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a raft to reach Europe, he passed through Mali, Algeria, and Libya. In the latter country, he was imprisoned. "I went through a really tough time. It's not something I like to remember," he comments laconically after, once again, apologizing. When he set foot on French territory in 2017, he was 16 years old. "My goal was always to find money to treat my sick mother. I never saw her again. She died without me being able to do anything," he says in a reproduction of what he himself recounts in the film. It was then that he began his struggle for something as basic as being, being a person. And that necessarily meant ceasing to be undocumented.
And so it went until he encountered the word casting. "I am part of an association where I collaborate as much as I can. I help immigrants who don't speak French and minors. They told me that some gentlemen from Paris were coming to do auditions for a movie. I showed up with 25 young people like me, and it was barely a five or ten-minute interview. I dismissed it as soon as it ended," he recalls with a smile. And he continues: "Then they called me back to meet again, but it was inconvenient for me. I had agreed to help a friend fix his car. They insisted, and I showed up. I remember they were late. And then they told me they wanted me to go to Paris to star in the movie. I was very confused. I didn't understand anything. The first thing I told them is that it was impossible because, without papers, I couldn't work. But they replied that it was just the opposite, if I got a legal job, I might possibly get the papers I had applied for." Just like that.
What followed was a long period of preparation to first familiarize himself with a profession and a city he knew nothing about. "I worked as a delivery man for weeks to learn how it's done and make everything look real," he points out. Nearby, the director agrees, and he also recalls his own experience. "I never thought about making a movie in Paris because I see cinema as an adventure. My previous films were set far away, always in Africa. However, during the pandemic, with the city completely empty, you looked out onto the street and who did you see? Only delivery men, mostly young black undocumented immigrants. I saw it clearly. It was an opportunity to talk not only about immigration but also about everything else, about the uberized economy we have embraced," he says.
Sangare, as mentioned, finally has his residency permit. And now he knows that casting, papers, or OQTF are things. Things that relieve, bring joy, and hurt. Depending on the moment. He also knows what it means to be a hero to some ("Those who recognize me on the street congratulate me. But there aren't many. In the movie, I am someone else," he comments) and a target for others. Since The Story of Souleymane became what it is, one of the most brilliant, vibrant, and emotional films of recent years, the far-right has rushed to spew its usual venom and filth with the usual fury. Nothing new. "I don't think the movie will change anything. Humans are like that, and who are we to confront the rising far-right? I am content with people, when they ask for something to be delivered to their homes, simply taking a moment to talk to the delivery person. Just being kind," says Boris Lojkine, and Abou Sangare agrees. Kind, another word, another thing.