The second screen at the Ipswich Film Theatre is small enough to make one miss Cinemateca and question whether it’s worth spending ten quid to watch something you could project larger on your wall. However, the cinema is also half-full on a bitterly cold night, and this engenders the sense of a communal experience which reminds one why it is still worth it. Lojkine’s film is a classic piece of neo-realism, following a day and a half in the life of Souleymane, an illegal immigrant from Guinea, trying to get by in Paris. The line between documentary and fiction feels suitably fine, and the film feels credible, even when the narrative takes advantage of every possible twist to make his day as bad as possible. If this smacks of script development, the film wraps up with a brilliant scene where Souleymane states his case for asylum to a sceptical if sympathetic female official. The scene is a long dialogue scene, but we as the audience are right inside Souleymane’s experience, and look on with the same pained hopelessness as the interviewer. This is the brass tacks of the world, the place where life-changing decisions are made, where the pitch has to be more than perfect, it has to be authentic. The scene is theatrical, urgent and compelling. For a small moment in our privileged world we get to live, from one side of the fence or another, the arbitrary cruelty of our geo-political system.
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