Saint Omer

Synopsis

Young novelist Rama attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young Senegalese woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. No one in the in the Saint-Omer courthouse can fathom why this well-educated, self-assured young woman might possibly have perpetrated such a heinous act.
In her fiction debut, Alice Diop once again questions notions of belonging and rejection in present-day France by taking us into the heart of a chilling courtroom drama with dark echoes of the tragedy of Medea.

Bio/Filmo

Alice Diop (Aulnay-sous-Bois, 1979) studied history and sociology. Her films explore issues of cultural diversity in contemporary French society. Her acclaimed documentaries include the short Vers la tendresse (2016) and the features La permanence (2016) and Nous (2021), screened at l’Alternativa 2021. After competing in Venice and Toronto, Saint Omer now arrives in Barcelona as France’s contender for the 2023 Oscar race for Best International Feature.
Claire Mathon (1975), the cinematographer behind Saint Omer, is of the women directors of photography featured in this year’s She Shoots parallel section at l’Alternativa, which includes another of the films she shot, Éric Baudelaire’s Une fleur à la bouche.