People are expected to sell their trauma. To become part of something they hope will offer them safety. Trauma that, the worse it is, can function as proof of desirability. In a country sustained by people who are forced to expose themselves, again and again. And even then, acceptance is not guaranteed. 

In Souleymane’s Story by Boris Lojkine, this is not a cynical idea but a lived reality. A requirement of a system that only recognizes humanity once it can be made useful. We are drawn into a journey that does not promise a happy ending but stretches across days that feel like an eternity, shaped by the struggle to live a “proper” life. A life others take for granted, yet one that remains inaccessible to so many.

Souleymane is a pure spirit. The kind of person who simply wants to begin again in a new country, only to find that it is not his character that determines his fate, but what others choose to make of him. If he hopes to be granted asylum, he is asked to perform an act that feels deeply unnatural. Souleymane must lie. Within these apathetic systems, he is no longer a person. He becomes an object, his value measured by his trauma, his origin, and the money attached to his presence.

Souleymane’s Story is a story of fear. The fear of saying the wrong thing. Of doing the wrong thing. The fear of being oneself in a world that was never built to make room for you.