Hope. 2014. France. Written and directed by Boris Lojkine. With Justin Wang, Endurance Newton, Nabyl Fally Koivogui. DCP. In French, English, Arabic; English subtitles. 86 min.
Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Boris Lojkine’s Hope serves as a prelude to his celebrated Souleymane’s Story (2024), in which a Guinean immigrant works as a delivery person in the streets of Paris as he awaits asylum status in France. In Hope, Lojkine follows a young Nigerian woman who travels almost 2,000 miles to the Moroccan shore, where she is rescued by a Cameroonian man who protects her from criminals preying on vulnerable refugees. In this delicate, truthful portrait, Lojkine finds tenderness amid the brutality of a ruthless, hostile world.