Souleymane is the typical immigrant, clinging on at the margins of the French capital. Originally from Guinea, he sublets the delivery app account of Cameroonian Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovanie) in order to work. Under constant pressure to meet food delivery targets, he needs money to pay fellow Guinean Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), who is coaching him to pass his asylum interview the day after next. The harassed Souleymane struggles to reproduce the details of the political repression story that Barry is coaching him to tell.

Filmed on the streets of Paris with some challenging cycling scenes, portraying a busy urban warren, Souleymane remains the constant focal point and in a precarious position — traffic wise,  economically and emotionally. As he needily hassles the app’s call centre, then loses his rag with a restaurateur behind on his orders, the film watches these micro-humiliations steadily erode his soul. The editing compounds this effect, curtly ending scenes as if on the same tight schedule as Souleymane himself.

In its intimate accompaniment of an immigrant trying to make ends meet, Lojkine’s film is reminiscent of Ramin Bahrani’s 2005 New York-set drama Man Push Cart — though it’s even less sentimental in the digital age. The algorithm is a more impersonal oppressor than any boss, and the subletting of the delivery account means Souleymane is doubly invisible: not even a contractor, not even a name in the system. The issues are fundamentally the same as Bahrani’s, but the exploitation has been doubled.

‘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.’  Natalia Winkelman,  New York Times