- Special German Premiere
SAINT OMER
Synopsis
Rama (Kayije Kagame), a literature professor and writer from Paris, travels to Saint-Omer in northern France to observe a trial. On trial is Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a young Senegalese student who left her fifteen-month-old daughter on a beach for the tide to take. Rama wants to turn it into a book, a modern Medea. But the longer she listens – to the defendant, the judge, the defence lawyer – the more her own story comes into view: Rama is pregnant, and her relationship to her own mother, to France, to the child to come does not survive the proceedings intact. “Saint Omer” by Alice Diop (France, 2022) is a courtroom film in which the verdict is not the most important thing.
French director Alice Diop, daughter of Senegalese parents and until then a documentary filmmaker, herself followed the 2016 trial of Fabienne Kabou. Since cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, she reconstructed her experience of listening as fiction. It premiered in the Venice 2022 competition, where the film received the Silver Lion – the Grand Jury Prize – and the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for best debut. “Saint Omer” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2022 in the Special German Premiere section.
Festival
Shown at the 2022 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
