Tristan Galland goes lightweight for the story of Souleymane
The Story of Souleymane is a film written and directed by Boris Lojkine and lensed by Tristan Galland. The film stars Abou Sangare as Souleymane, an immigrant from Guinea working for a food delivery service in Paris. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers. But Souleymane is not ready. The film was awarded the Jury’s prize at this years Cannes Un certain regard.
How did you first meet with Boris Lojkine, the director?
Tristan Galland: Boris contacted me in April 2023 on the advice of Olivier Boonjing. He had shot his two first films with Elin Kirschfink, but she was busy on Guillaume Senez’s movie in Japan.
For this third film, Boris wanted to lighten the shooting and he was looking for a person who had one foot in fiction and the other in documentary. I read the script, which I loved. It was fascinating, the story was told with such concern for realism that we are
directly immersed in the daily life of undocumented immigrants working as delivery people. In addition to the social realism side, the film was written as a thriller with a frantic pace and constant tension, which brought an additional cinematic dimension. I immediately wanted to shoot the film. We met in person a little later and we talked a lot about the importance of dealing with this systemic problem from Souleymane’s point of view and his emotions.
We quickly realized that we shared the same vision for the film and Boris invited me to join the team.
How did you prepare the film and how long did it take?
We started prepping 7 weeks before shooting. I especially remember us crisscrossing the streets of Paris on bikes day and night. There were over 85 locations to find and it kept us very busy. As soon as we could, we met to wander in the streets looking for delivery restaurants, places where delivery people can shelter… I really discovered a side of Paris that Boris wanted to show in the film.
Boris wanted the camera to always seek and follow the action. Instead of making a precise breakdown, we spent time defining the issues of each scene and imagining them in the settings. Then, I took photos to check which axes worked best. These images were shared with the rest of the team on a Dropbox.
The preparation was also important to find the right filming configuration. From the start Boris’ desire was to leave a large place for reality in the film. The camera work had to adapt to the city and not the other way around. We had to be able to remain flexible, light and mobile. There were some exceptions but that meant no blocking, and above all a team reduced to the minimum. Quite early in the preparation, we did a day of test shooting in the middle of Paris to understand clearly what a reduced team could bring us and what it took away from us. We adapted the crew for each scene.
We defined 4 different configurations:
– The solo configuration where I was alone with the camera, like in a documentary.
– The duo configuration where we were 2, Haruyo Yokota (1st AC) and myself. ¾ of the film was shot this way
– For the bike configuration I rode a cargo bike driven by key grip Jonathan Ly.
Haruyo was also there to prep the camera setup.
– The classic configuration for all scenes located in the emergency shelter. For these sets, Florian Gomez the gaffer came to lend us a hand with his team. As the film was shot in Paris, the backups were made directly in Polyson post-production lab.
Did you adapt the shooting schedule to this?
Yes, we worked very closely with 1st AD Vincent Prades during the whole preparation. The film takes place over two and a half days, but the shooting was spread over 2 months between October and December. It was necessary to take into account the problems of continuity like the weather, the disappearance of leaves on the trees, the appearance of Christmas decorations in the streets, etc… Added to this was the availability of actors and big sets and the different filming configurations that we tried to bring together.
Having a smaller crew also allowed us to have more days of filming. The main team was booked and paid for 40 days but the schedule only provided for 37. The last 3 days were used to cover the unexpected. In the end, we filmed for 39 days.
Did it work to film in Paris like a documentary?
Yes, very well! It gave an authenticity and a scale to the film that we could not have recreated. All this life has greatly nourished the image and sound and it also really helped the acting. I often shot with a little rain cover on the camera and it looked like a small TV team. In the end we hardly had any camera gaze. Boris was either next to me without a monitor or not far away with a small 7-inch monitor slung over my shoulder.
Tell us about the look of the image, is that something you talked about beforehand?
Yes, we talked about the visual direction of the film in preparation but above all to define the side of Paris that we wanted to show for this story. A worn and textured Paris, with shiny and strong colours. The places we chose, particularly around line 2 subway, were so cinematic that the aesthetic choice consisted above all of knowing how to frame. I sometimes felt like I was in “Subway” the photo book by Bruce Davidson with images taken in the New York subway in the 80s in Kodachrome with short focal length. It remained as a reference in the back of our minds. For the format, we chose to shoot in 3/2 mainly to make the frame more dynamic. This less wide format forced me to move the camera a little more to keep Sangare in the frame or to go get someone else. It added a little nervousness when we needed it. The look of the film was further clarified when Marine Surblé the colourist created the filming LUT at the end of preparation. She was able to work from images of the test shooting we had done on locatio .
For the night interiors for example, how many were there of you?
We were 2 for the visual aspect on the vast majority of the sets. I had a small box with scraps of fabrics, two small Rosco LEDs and a case of Astera. While Haruyo prepared the camera, I took the time to modify the light a little if necessary. Often it was more a question of extinguishing sources than of adding them. For example, for the apartment of the customer who refused the order, I unplugged the wall lights of the corridor which bothered me, I added an indirect Astera tube behind the door and I moved a floor lamp that was on site to give a little depth. For the social collection bus I was a little beaten. We had chosen an RATP bus in prep but when the bus arrived with neon tubes of the wrong colour, I had to replace them with Astera. We started with half an hour of delay, but everyone was understanding and we were able to make up for this delay afterwards.
What grip systems did you use for framing?
The film was shot entirely on the shoulder without support with the exception of the bicycle shots. For those, we used an Easyrig arm rigged to the traveling bike. As Sangare is in almost every shot of the film and is often in motion, I quickly got used to his pace. I kept an eye for obstacles and Vincent Prades (1st AD) was often looking out for me.
For the cycling scenes, we took a few days in prep to test different systems with the key grip Jonathan Ly. We wanted to be able to follow Sangaré in Parisian traffic. As he zigzagged between cars or took cycle paths, the only way to follow him was to film from another electric bike. After several tests we chose two different bike configurations.
The back/profile configuration for which I framed from the front tray of a two-carrier cargo bike led by Jonathan and who followed Sangaré. The side config where I was sitting in the rear seat (turned the other way) of a long-tail bike back to back with Jonathan who precededSangaré. The camera was shaking a lot but it’s exactly what Boris wanted to accentuate the feeling of danger and immersion in the city. Boris was driving the “sound bike” not very far. And we communicated with Sangaré via Headphones. I also had two small microphones on my forehead to capture the stereo ambiance of the street which scrolls as close as possible to the image. With our procession of cyclists, we were a little less discreet than for the other scenes but it was very fun to do.
How did you approach the lighting for the exteriors?
As we knew we would be shooting exterior nights without a lighting crew, we also chose the sets according to the light. I was a little afraid to find only monochrome streets sodium lit, but the neighborhood in which we filmed often offered a nice mix of colours. Sodium orange, mercury green, cyan neon lights, economical bulbs and saturated light signs, we were able to play with all these different shades and give the colourful look that we wanted for the film. I often had to turn off a streetlamp or put a bit of cine foil on an annoying spot but most of the time, we made do with what we had. The good side of having the camera on the shoulder is that you can easily make adjustments to “frame the light” rather than lighting the frame. As we often shot in sequence shots, we talked a lot with the boom operator Rodrigo Diaz to avoid shadows. The pleasure of a small team is also the collaboration between sound and image which is more like a documentary shooting.
For the outside days, we wanted a cold and rainy autumn film because the delivery men are often working in these difficult conditions, when people do not want to go out to get food.
We had a little bit of everything in terms of weather over the two months of shooting. The days were short and the sun was setting at around 5:00 p.m. but we were able to benefit from beautiful dusk lights.
And for the HMC?
To keep the team small, the wardrobe work was done in preparation with the costume designer Marine Peyraud. The choice of colours and textures for the delivery men’s outfits was rather dictated by the observations of Marine and Boris in the streets of Paris. We knew that the outfit of Sangaré would be dark, discreet and that it had to be resistant to bad weather. Marine suggested adding a discreet touch of red to catch the eye and it was very useful. The hat was also very useful to Marc-Olivier Brullé, the sound engineer for placing HF microphone far from the K-way which was relatively noisy. The film was made without makeup except for Sangaré’s injuries on which Sandrine Denis did a great job.
What camera equipment did you use?
We shot with an Alexa Mini, in ARRIRAW Open Gate 3.4K. For the optics, we used the Zeiss Superspeed MKIII. Almost the entire film was framed with 25 and 35mm lenses. I find these lenses very beautiful, especially at T2. It’s a fairly simple kit, very light.
Tell us about the grading.
It was our first collaboration with Marine Surblé and I’m super happy with what she came up with. We took the time to question the direction taken with the LUT during the shooting and that led us to push the contrast and texture further. We voluntarily decided to lose info in the low lights while keeping the nuances on the faces. As in Kodachrome, we saturated certain colours and attenuated others but above all we avoided smoothing the light connections between sequences to keep this idea of rupture and abundance present in the editing and in the sound.
How was the relationship with Sangaré, who is incredible in the film and a non-professional actor?
Sangaré was very generous throughout the film. It was the first time he was in front of a camera and he took his role very seriously. He managed to be himself with a camera at 50 cm of his face. His performance was so great that every day, I felt like I was in a documentary. I am quite convinced that the lightness of the filming also allowed Sangaré to feel confident and in a real collaborative relationship with the rest of the team.
Tell us about that last shot of the film with the low sun.
These are the little gifts we sometimes receive. Basically, we had to shoot this shot an hour earlier and for various reasons we were a little late. We went out and the sky cleared to give us half an hour of golden light. The film ends with a fairly long scene, emotional, and this light really came to contrast with the harshness of the moment. It makes the ending even more memorable. I’m very happy with this latest plan.
interview by Colin Leveque.