Saint Omer (2022)

Directed by

Alice Diop

Genre

drama film

Country

France

Runtime

2h 02m

Rated

PG-13

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 207 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young pregnant novelist attends the trial of a Senegalese woman accused of leaving her baby to drown on a beach. She watches the legal proceedings and reflects on the case.

contemplativesomberintimaterestrainedseriousgrippingthought-provokingmelancholic

What happens

Saint Omer is a 2022 French legal drama film written and directed by Alice Diop, and starring Kayije Kagame and Guslagie Malanda. It is Diop's first narrative feature; her other films have been documentaries. The film is based on the French court case of Fabienne Kabou, who was convicted in 2016 of murdering her infant by drowning. Diop attended Kabou's trial. Rama (Kagame) is a young pregnant novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Malanda), a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her 15-month-old child by leaving her on a beach to be swept away. Rama imagines writing about the event as a literary retelling of the Greek tragedy Medea. The film premiered in-competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on 7 September 2022, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and the Lion of the Future. Additional screenings were held at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2022 New York Film Festival before theatrical release in France on 23 November 2022. The film was selected as the French entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards, and made the December shortlist. The film won the Grand Prix for Best Film at Film Fest Gent in 2022. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• The World After Us (2022)
• Wolf and Dog (2022)
• The Sixth Child (2022)
• Vacances (2022)
• A Woman (2022)
• L'enfant du paradis (2022)
• In a Better World (2022)
• Mother and Son (2022)