SAINT OMER
Genre
Drama
Running time
122 minutes
Year
2022
Language
French
Subtitle
English and Arabic
Country
France
Director
Alice Diop
Bio
Producer
Toufik Ayadi, Christophe Barral
Cast
Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit, Xavier Maly, Robert Cantarella, Salimata Kamate, Thomas De Pourquery, Adama Diallo Tamba, Mariam Diop, Dado Diop
Scriptwriter
Alice Diop, Amrita David, Marie Ndiaye
In 2013, all of France was captivated by the trial of a brilliant Senegalese student who had drowned her child in the sea near the town of Saint-Omer, a seemingly inexplicable act she blamed on sorcery. French-Senegalese documentary maker Alice Diop, who was pregnant herself at the time, spent weeks in the courtroom watching the trial unfold, an experience she has adapted as her first fiction film. This is not a conventional courtroom drama. Rama (Kayije Kagame) is a literary academic writing a paper on Medea; she can claim a professional interest. But as she watches Laurence (the magnetic Guslagie Malanda) speak, she finds herself identifying with this young woman, despite what she has done; she recognises her experience of having her identity and agency subtly denied by others, including this court. Diop’s account of the trial is ultimately an inquiry into how we construct our stories, both for others and for ourselves.
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