LILLE: An undocumented 23-year-old Guinean migrant living in France who won a prize at the Cannes film festival last year has been granted a work permit, enabling him to avoid deportation, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

Abou Sangare won rave reviews as the lead actor in last year’s film “L’Histoire de Souleymane” ( “Souleymane’s Story”) in which he played a food delivery cyclist in Paris who is preparing for an immigration interview.

He won the prize for best male performance in the secondary Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in a role that reprised many of his own personal experiences as an undocumented migrant living in France.

After making three unsuccessful requests for work visas and being subject to a deportation order, he succeeded on Monday in obtaining a one-year permit for the first time, his lawyer Claire Perinaud said.

“He will ask for renewals and will be able to move to longer-term visas at a later date,” she said, confirming a story that was first reported in his local newspaper Ici Picardie.

Sangare told the Liberation newspaper that he had been offered a job as a mechanic and intended to take it up, rather than pursue a career in film.

“There might be offers but I’m a mechanic, that’s my trade,” he said. “I can’t wait to start working in the garage.” Despite having no acting experience, Sangare was picked by director Boris Lojkine after he attended a casting call in his hometown of Amiens in northeast France, in between off-the-books jobs fixing cars and helping out at a local education charity.

He left Guinea as a teenager, seeking to make enough money to pay for medical care for his epileptic mother. His journey took him across the Sahara to Algeria and Libya then across the Mediterranean in an inflatable boat to Italy and finally France.

“When we chose Sangare to play the main role in the film, it was a big responsibility,” director Lojkine said in October when his film was released in France. “It’s only when he has his papers that I will have the impression of having finished my film.”

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2025