Netflix and Fleuve Films presents Kery James (Demba), Jammeh Diangana (Soulaymaan), Bakary Diombera (Noumouke), Chloe Jouannet (Lisa), Kani Diarra (Khadijah), Dali Bensallah (Samir), Cherine Ghemri (Safia), Makan Magassa (Abdou) Ahmed Bedda (Sahli), Aimen Derriachi (Farid), Nadia Lazzouni (Nadya). Script by, Emily-Jane Torrens; Producer, Jean Christophe Colson; Director of Photography, Pierre Aim. (c) 2019
Here I am in a territory about which I know nothing. But it has a storyline that gets me concerned. It is an African tale of life in a Paris ghetto, where gangs, guns, and police brutality is every day. The African French from Senegal in France, the assimilated Africans that the French thought they could absorb into the Hellenistic culture of the Western world. No, No. That is the greatest deceit in the human endeavor to turn a tribe or a culture into your need.
The characters in Street Flow, besides Khadijah, and why, ‘besides?’ as part of the second generation of Bambaras, Malians, Senegalese, Ivorians, Guineans, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Gambians, are all third generations and are all Muslims. The French saw the essence of the African contributions to the fight against Germany, and they grant them first generations citizenship to the mother country, through utilizing emancipation and assimilation. “All those that fought with us to drive and defeat the Nazis away are our brothers and could become French citizens.” Thus preached the French colonial policy. The late president, Houfet Boannye of Ivory Coast, was a French passport-carrying citizen of France.
I want to belabor here to narrate a story of a Taore, of a Bambara tribe, whose first generational parent fought side by side with the French Imperial army to defeat Nazi Germany insurgence into France. The Patriarch, Taore, was granted French citizenship, with the assumption that all his future generations could benefit from the same. Still, he left behind a daughter-in-law, Khadijah (Kani Diarra) of his son, with three kids in France, the oldest, Demba (Kery James), Soulaymaan (Jammeh Diagana), Noumouke (Bakary Diombera) in Paris ghetto fighting for both survival and self-dignity, in the face of France divide and rule policy.
Demba, a black Arab, has a thriving café and smokeshop right at the tip of the ghetto peopled by mostly North African Arabs. Demba’s restaurant and smokeshop is a front, and the drug business is his principal. For such, the mother doesn’t want to have anything with him. Soulayman, Demba’s younger brother, is on his way out of Law school but presently teaches in grade school. Five minutes into the story, the high school expels Noumouke, the last son of Khadijah, from school. Of the three children, only Soulaymaan behaved promisingly.
Street Flow has two essential plot points that converged at the most unexpected. Demba has a fierce rival drug dealer in the ghetto, called Sahli (Ahmed Bedda), who lives in the project as well. Demba’s brother Noumouke, and his Arab girlfriend Sofia, (Cherine Ghemri), from the same school, break into Sahli’s apartment and stole thirty thousand euros and share it equally. Noumouke keeps his undercover, but Sofia buys herself a brand new motorbike, and not long, Sahli catches her. Noumouke’s mother discovers his in his room and reports it to Soulaymaan, who, in turn, hands it over to Demba.
The beef that develops between Sahli and Demba goes deeper. Sahli alleges that fifty thousand euros got stolen from his apartment, which Demba disputes but volunteers to refund twenty-five thousand euros of it. Abdou (Makan Magassa) arbitrates between Demba and Sahli. Abdou has once controlled this neighborhood in drugs before spending seven years in prison, and upon his return, the young generation has taken over-Sahli and Demba-the community. The first time meeting with Demba, he refuses a welcome envelope from him. Abdou “doesn’t beg,” but accepts the gift, anyway. Abdou has his eyes on taking over the territory he once controlled. He has a large shipment of cocaine coming in from Masssailles, but Demba: “I go to the source of supply, myself,” puts it bluntly. Abdou didn’t like the answer.
The other plotline concerns Soulaymaan and his education going forward. For his graduation from Law school, he has an impending public debate with Lisa (Chloe Jouannet), White, and a classmate at the Law school and a classroom teaching partner. A romantic relationship seems developing between the two young folks, even as contenders. Still, when Soulayman, born and bred in France and Paris, was stopped, frisked, and harassed by the police, he takes a second look at the relationship with a bourgeoise White girl, Lisa, and a black African Arab, Soulaymaan.
They both go into the debate as pure adversaries. Lisa wins the contest, and once again, they become friends, and Soulaymaan promises to meet her at the train station to say bye to Lisa as she’ll be boarding the train to London for a year-long law internship. Soulaymaan couldn’t make it. Demba is shot dead in his arm by Abdou, just when he’s ready to take his brother to the train station. And right around the corner, Abdou takes Sahli out too. Abdou, by brutal diplomacy, clears his way as a comeback kid, because he kills the two contending drug dealers while everyone’s suspicion goes in the other directions.
Street Flow has a social theme. Demba and Sahli’s struggle to take over the hood in the control of drug trade comes to a head over Noumouke and Sofia stealing his money. And when they end up in front of Abdou, he picks the chance of pitting Sahli against Demba. And when everything goes down, Abdou comes with Sahli, a White Arab, both hooded on a bike, and Abdou pulls the trigger on Demba, a Black Arab. When the bike runs from there and turns the corner, Abdou shoots Sahli in the back.
Like elsewhere in the world where there are racism and ghetto, drug warfare is always paramount; this subject brings us to the topic of the debate between Soulaymaan and Lisa. And the discussion stands as the undercurrent of this film. Argument: Is the government responsible for the current situation in the French suburbs? Lisa, White, argues in the affirmative (yes), and Soulaymaan, Black, in the negative (no).
Soulaymaan, (on the infestation of drugs in the projects) “…You need (immigrants) to remain permanently distressed and victimized, and above all, what you need desperately is for them to need you. So you feel less guilty about all the comforts you’ve had since childhood, less guilty about being White. He argues that the immigrants, being what they are or turned out to be, is a matter of choices they make. Despite the infestation of drugs in poor neighborhoods, one can always escape it all and build a successful man of himself, as he believes in social mobility.
Lisa’s Rebuttal, “I’m a White bourgeoise woman from central Paris…Soulaymaan believes in social mobility; the black community calls him “oreo,” black on the outside, white on the inside. Zyed Bouna, Ali Ziri, Adama Taori, all killed directly and indirectly by police, killed by our government. How can you tell the victims that police in no way responsible for those killings? Tell Amal Bentounsi here today whose brother was shot in the back by a policeman, that the government isn’t responsible for police violence, that the police never condemned, or in most cases, are giving laughable sentences.”
Soulaymaan, “I know the project. I live there. There are talents in the project, intelligence, ideas. There are dreams, but when two drug dealers start a war for purely financial reasons and this war takes one of them, is it the government that pulls the trigger? Is it the government that prevents the people from coming together, from uniting, from organizing themselves? The answer is greed. Jealousy.”
Lisa, “The government is responsible.”
Soulaymaan, “If we recognize the government as solely responsible for the current situation in the projects, we must then imagine that these people believe they have suffered prejudice, institute civil proceedings and demand compensation… You only see their future in the guise of employment benefits, a way to limit their aspirations and their success.”
Lisa, “Who is the government, you, me, us? Whoever has felt her vote or decision has ever influenced decisions governments make?”
Soulaymaan, “Liberty is a fact. Voting right is a fact. I’m not a spectator of my life, but its subject. My hope lies in the wings of my fearlessness. My courage emerges from the depth of my adversity. I tell you without sarcasm; my place is not in prison.”
After the theatrical rhetorics on either side, one blaming the demise of the immigrant population for not taking responsibility for themselves, Lisa thinks the government is guilty of negligence. The irony of Soulaymaan’s case is during the debate, and while talking about immigrants killing immigrants because of greed, his eyes crossed his older brother, Demba, in the crowd. That same evening, Demba becomes a victim of gun violence right in front of his café, and in Soulayman’s arms.
I must have come across this topic by chance. But as I write this review, thousands of Americans are on the street demonstrating against police brutality as one of their own unarmed Blackman, gets murdered by a White police officer, in cold blood. Soulaymaan’s performance in this film equals a future Malcolm X. Good movie to watch, and don’t forget the bulging eyes of the kid, Noumouke.