“What happens to me here is as if I were in a film” – Libération

After winning an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival for “The Story of Souleymane”, in theaters this Wednesday, the 23-year-old Guinean will be able to submit a new request for regularization. For “Libération”, he returns to the filming, his incredible journey and his difficulties in obtaining his regularization.

In May, at the Cannes Film Festival, the Un Certain Regard jury, chaired by Xavier Dolan, honored the unknown Abou Sangare with a best actor prize for his role as a bicycle deliveryman in Souleymane’s Story by Boris Lojkine. Praised, congratulated, the young man of Guinean origin then returned to Amiens where he has lived for seven years, professional mechanics-heavy goods baccalaureate in his pocket, a promise of permanent employment in a local company pending due to lack of obtaining papers in good and due form. Three requests for regularization and three refusals (2019, 2021, 2023), because he does not have a student visa to be able to enter a work-study apprenticeship, or for the latest because he cannot prove experience in his branch. As Sibylle Luperce, from the Education Without Borders Network, who has known him since his arrival in Picardy, says, “despite the company’s wish to continue training him within the framework of a real permanent contract, in a sector where they have difficulty hiring, that it is necessary, despite the diploma, to advance seniority may be surprising. These young people waste a lot of time and the managers