Saint Omer

Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
NOW AVAILABLE TO OWN OR VIEW ON DEMAND
Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop
A great film, with a wonderful central performance. A complex, layered, very interesting exploration of race, class and gender. I highly recommend it.
Powerful. A thought-provoking, richly rewarding movie.
Pitch-perfect. Human drama of the most intimate kind, building to a stunningly thought-provoking climax.
An extraordinary experience.
Astonishing. Fresh, urgent and consistently commanding.
A masterpiece. A fantastically viseral film dissects the rules of a game that’s always been rigged.
Enthralling. A spellbinding debut.
Quietly momentous. An hypnotically absorbing film that challenges accepted ideas of perspective, of subjectivity and objectivity — and even of what cinema can be when it’s framed by an intelligence that doesn’t accept those accepted ideas. Extraordinary.
Extraordinary. A stunning film.
A taut, bewitching court procedural that doesn’t condescend to the viewer by slinking toward black-and-white offerings of good and evil... It dances on the surface of these participants, and in their subtle ripples, to reveal the humanity in the seemingly inhumane.
Extraordinary. An unblinking stunner. Saint Omer extends the clear-eyed gaze and burning social interest of Diop's non-fiction work into new narrative terrain, with nary a tremor of uncertainty.
Resoundingly powerful. Saint Omer whispers with the voices of so many drifting in the margins of what is meant to be a progressive and egalitarian society. The slow build of this precisely structured film is remarkable, as if we are watching the reinvention of a hoary genre.
An intellectually charged, emotionally wrenching story about the inability of storytelling — literary, legal or cinematic — to do justice to the violence and strangeness of human experience.
Director: Alice Diop
Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dreville, Aurélia Petit
Duration: 123mins
Country of Origin: France
M
Mature themes and infrequent coarse language
A great film, with a wonderful central performance. A complex, layered, very interesting exploration of race, class and gender. I highly recommend it.
Powerful. A thought-provoking, richly rewarding movie.
Pitch-perfect. Human drama of the most intimate kind, building to a stunningly thought-provoking climax.
An extraordinary experience.
Astonishing. Fresh, urgent and consistently commanding.
A masterpiece. A fantastically viseral film dissects the rules of a game that’s always been rigged.
Enthralling. A spellbinding debut.
Quietly momentous. An hypnotically absorbing film that challenges accepted ideas of perspective, of subjectivity and objectivity — and even of what cinema can be when it’s framed by an intelligence that doesn’t accept those accepted ideas. Extraordinary.
Extraordinary. A stunning film.
A taut, bewitching court procedural that doesn’t condescend to the viewer by slinking toward black-and-white offerings of good and evil... It dances on the surface of these participants, and in their subtle ripples, to reveal the humanity in the seemingly inhumane.
Extraordinary. An unblinking stunner. Saint Omer extends the clear-eyed gaze and burning social interest of Diop's non-fiction work into new narrative terrain, with nary a tremor of uncertainty.
Resoundingly powerful. Saint Omer whispers with the voices of so many drifting in the margins of what is meant to be a progressive and egalitarian society. The slow build of this precisely structured film is remarkable, as if we are watching the reinvention of a hoary genre.
An intellectually charged, emotionally wrenching story about the inability of storytelling — literary, legal or cinematic — to do justice to the violence and strangeness of human experience.

OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2023 ACADEMY AWARDS – Best International Feature (France)
WINNER - 2023 CÉSAR AWARDS - Best Debut Feature
WINNER - 2022 PRIX LOUIS-DELLUC - Best French Film of the Year
WINNER - 2022 VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - Grand Jury Prize
2022 EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS - Nominee - Best Director
2022 INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS - Nominee - Best International Film
WINNER - 2023 PALM SPRINGS FILM FESTIVAL - FIPRESCI Prize (Best Picture)
WINNER - 2022 CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - Best Screenplay
WINNER - 2022 PRIX JEAN VIGO
WINNER - 2022 SEVILLE EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL - Best Film
WINNER - 2022 GENEVA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - Best Film
OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2023 INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2022 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2022 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2022 BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (In Competition)

One of the most buzzed-about films of the 2022/23 awards season, the extraordinary narrative debut feature by acclaimed documentarian Alice Diop depicts the gripping story of a young novelist who is forced to confront her own complex family history as she attends a notorious murder trial.

Northeastern France, 2016. Rama (played with restrained intensity by remarkable discovery Kayije Kagame), a successful Parisian journalist and author, has travelled to the coastal town of Saint-Omer to document the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a well-educated young Senegalese Frenchwoman who is accused of abandoning her 15-month-old daughter on a beach at high tide. At work on a modern-day adaptation of Medea, Rama plans to incorporate Laurence’s story into her new novel, but the case affects her in unexpected ways and she soon begins to unravel over complex childhood memories and increasing uncertainty over her own impending motherhood…

Inspired by true events, SAINT OMER is an arresting and profound film of constantly shifting layers; at once a tense courtroom drama, an inquiry into female agency, and a provocative examination of myth. Announcing Alice Diop as a major new voice in world cinema, her film was selected to represent France at the 2023 Academy Awards with very good reason.

Saint Omer - a film by Alice Diop

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NOW AVAILABLE TO OWN OR VIEW ON DEMAND