Films We Like presents SAINT OMER, a film by Alice Diop.
2022 Venice Film Festival
Grand Jury Prize & Best Film Debut
France’s Official Selection – 2023 Academy Awards
Opens across Canada beginning Friday, January 20, 2023
“Based on who they are—what they experience or go through, their biographical and political history—people do not look at the film in the same way,” Diop says. “It is dizzying for me to realize that every time. And also extremely moving.” – Alice Diop, Director co-screenwriter
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Alice Diop’s award-winning first fiction feature film SAINT OMER opens across Canada beginning Friday, January 20, 2023,
SAINT OMER was awarded the Grand Jury Prize and Best Film Debut at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, and marks the first time that France has submitted a film directed by a Black woman to represent it for Best International Feature at the Oscars.
In a court of law, young novelist Rama attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15 month old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgement.
Evoking the Greek tragedy Medea, Diop’s inspiration for SAINT OMER was the 2013 news story of a 15 month old girl found drowned on a beach and the French mother of Senegalese origin accused in her death
Instinctively drawn to the case after seeing a photo of the accused mother taken by surveillance camera, Diop attended the trial in 2016 as an observer where she was badly shaken by the experience. Diop used court transcripts in writing the screenplay and creating the character of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), as the accused mother and a pregnant young novelist, Rama, (Kayije Kagame) attending the trial.
About Alice Diop
French screenwriter and director Alice Diop was born 1979. After studying history and visual sociology at the Sorbonne, she began her career as a documentary filmmaker. Her short and medium length films selected and awarded prizes in several festivals, include LES SÉNÉGALAISES ET LA SÉNÉGAULOISE (2007), LA MORT DE DANTON (2011), LA PERMANENCE (2016) and TOWARDS TENDERNESS (2016), which won with the César for Best Short Film in 2017.
Her feature length documentary WE (2021) won the Best Documentary Award as well as Best Film in the Encounters section at the Berlin Film Festival in 2021. SAINT OMER is Alice Diop’s fiction feature film debut.
About Films We Like
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Carmine Street Guitars) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent, and international films in Canada. Recent releases include Anonymous Club, The Passengers of the Night and Montana Story
Running time: 121 minutes
French with English subtitles
Media contact:
Virginia Kelly
V Kelly & Associates