Abou Sangare, undocumented actor in “The Story of Souleymane”, and Charlotte Chaffanjon for her book “Deux Frères”

In Tout Public on Wednesday October 9, 2024, Abou Sangare for his role in “The Story of Souleymane”, and Charlotte Chaffanjon presents her book “Two Brothers”.

The Story of Souleymaneor when fiction meets reality. The main actor Abou Sangare, interpreter a young Guinean man in an irregular situation in France confronted with the harshness of the Uberization of the economy, is himself undocumented, and has seen his requests for regularization rejected on several occasions, which made him experience precariousness extreme in the world of work.

He decides to respond to the ad for the film’s casting. After the selection stages for the role, he was selected, and ended up winning the “Un certain regard” male performance prize at Cannes.

“What surprised me most about cinema was the teamwork.”

A success story which nevertheless takes nothing away from the young man’s precariousness, since he has an appointment on Thursday October 10, 2024, with the Amiens prefecture to submit his fourth request for regularization. Sibylle Luperce, a volunteer with the Education Without Borders Network of the Somme, who accompanied him during his first years in Amiens, expresses her incomprehension at the prefecture’s refusal to grant his request for regularization. “There was a company that offered him a promise of employment, an employment contract. And this company supports him again for the third time for an application for an employee residence permit. So if you will, he checked all the boxes for integration at the school level.“

Like the character in the film, Abou knows the survival mechanisms when one finds oneself in an irregular situation. Politeness is required, whether towards the customers to whom Souleymane delivers their orders, or towards the police during checks.

The Story of Souleymane releases this Wednesday, October 9, 2024 in theaters.

It is the story of two brothers, Marwan and Bilal Berreni, with immense artistic talent and the same tragic destiny, and parents forever confronted with the mystery of their disappearances. The daily journalist Release Charlotte Chaffanjon wanted to bring life and light back to these journeys, beyond a news item which caused so much discussion, particularly because one of these two young men, Marwan Berreni, was a star of the television series More beautiful life. The other, the younger Bilal, was a street art virtuoso, a world-renowned graffiti artist. Ten years apart, his two brothers were found dead, each after weeks of disappearance.

What first fascinates the journalist are these brothers who together constitute sides of the same coin. Bilal, the youngest, who “(…) was in a form of radicalism”leaving to travel around the world, and refusing to “earn every penny”. At the same time, he sees the evolution of his big brother Marwan, becoming a star of the small screen, while he himself “[rejette] glitter, this kind of plastic world.” Which does not prevent her from adoring her brother, she explains.

“These are themes that are very universal. It is the question of fraternity, the question of the relationship with mourning. It is also the question of parenthood.”

Charlotte Challanjon

franceinfo

Charlotte Challanjon is indeed interested in parenthood, since she carries out several interviews with the parents of the two brothers. These in a certain way embody “exactly what we aspire to be [en tant que] parents (…): succeed in ensuring that their children are happy, joyful, succeed in following their desires, to the end of their art too, to the end of their creativity…”says the journalist.

Some mysteries remain, but this book Two brothers by Charlotte Challanjon allows light and beauty to be put back in their rightful place in this story.

A program with the participation of Matteu Maestracci, journalist in the Franceinfo culture department.