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 Wednesday.

Abou Sangare won rave reviews as the lead actor in last year’s film “L’Histoire de Souleymane, 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.