Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

Souleymane’s Story immerses us in an unrepresented world of African migrants in France with a ticking clock urgency that puts most thrillers to shame.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

Best of all, Lojkine’s film comes with a refreshing generosity of spirit.

The New York Times by Natalia Winkelman

Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, an affecting film about struggle set over two days in Paris, is the rare character study that does not only build empathy with its hero’s pain but channels its sensation.

The New Yorker by Justin Chang

The film’s considerable power depends entirely on its moment-to-moment persuasiveness, on a set of narrative and aesthetic choices that, as presented—in a series of swift, kinetically composed, and jaggedly edited scenes—seldom feel like choices at all.

RogerEbert.com by Robert Daniels

While “Souleymane’s Story” throws many roadblocks in this Guinean man’s way, it’s pretty clear where we’re heading. And while that predictability does slightly undermine the weightiness of the journey, the ending, a cathartic revelation, is granted immeasurable pathos due to Sangaré’s overwhelming openness as an actor.

Screen Daily by Amber Wilkinson

Non-professional Sangare is magnetic throughout, whether on the saddle or an interview hot seat.

Variety by Jessica Kiang

If the hero’s dire situation is a ticking clock, Lojkine’s intelligent and empathetic film places us right alongside him, with each cog of circumstance and each gear of good fortune grinding against him at every turn.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer

A realistic and very humanistic look at one immigrant’s grueling daily life in Paris, where he struggles to make a living and obtain legal status.

The Guardian by Phil Hoad

The issues are fundamentally the same: the enforced invisibility of a class of economic migrants who are now so numerous that many game the system, doubling their exploitation. Sangaré’s exemplary, unfeigned performance helps them speak.

The Irish Times by Tara Brady

This is a nervy study of how poverty wears people down, eroded by uncertainty and the grinding effort to stay afloat.

The Film Verdict by Stephen Dalton

The Story of Souleymane is more than its individual parts. Scenes fly by, prompted by the move-move-move! ethos of the hustling immigrant. This is a film told close in close quarters. On several occasions, the camera is so close to our hero that you can smell the desperation coming off his skin, which, as richly and darkly lensed by Tristan Galand, is mutedly lustrous.

Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard

Petty humiliations accumulate into a quietly blistering indictment of a culture that’s conditioned immigrants to hustle, wait endlessly, and smile through it all, as if their sanity weren’t constantly under strain.

IndieWire by Christian Zilko

Sometimes Souleymane feels like he’s sprinting through a race with no finish line, and sometimes he’s running into an unmovable brick wall. The film exists in the space between those opposing outcomes, and its contradictions become its greatest strength as it depicts the endless exhaustion of navigating a system that doesn’t care about you nearly as much as it claims to.