A few months ago, Abou Sangare was an anonymous, 23-year-old Guinean immigrant lacking permanent legal status in northern France and, like thousands of others, fighting.
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Now a lead actor in Souleymane’s Story, an award-winning feature film that hit French cinemas this week, his face is on every street corner and in metro stations, bus stops and newspapers.
The film and Sangare’s sudden success are casting light on irregular migration in France as its new government is taking a harder line on the issue.
It is vowing to make it harder for immigrants lacking permanent legal status to stay and easier for France to expel them.
Sangare plays a young asylum seeker who works as a Paris delivery man, weaving his bicycle through the traffic in the City of Light. In a case of life imitating art, Sangare’s future also hangs in the balance.
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Like the character he portrays, Sangare is hoping to persuade French officials to grant him residency and abandon their efforts to force him to leave.