Saint Omer

Saint Omer is a disconcerting and poignant film about the doubts associated with motherhood and the persistence of racism in France. Rama is pregnant herself and discovers many parallels between her and Laurence. Her research takes her to Saint Omer, where she attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga): a young woman from Senegal who studies philosophy in France and becomes pregnant by an older Frenchman. She conceals the pregnancy and birth, deliberately leaving the baby on the beach to be swept away by the tide. At her trial, she claims she was bewitched and cursed. The woman's almost elusive act evokes all sorts of elusive ghosts from Rama's own past. Questions about origin and upbringing, and whether she herself was loved and desired by her mother. Saint Omer is the fiction debut of award-winning documentary maker Alice Diop, known for social French documentaries such as Nous (2021). In 2016 she followed the process on which the film is based. With Saint Omer, Diop knows how to challenge accepted ideas of perspective, of subjectivity and objectivity. Saint Omer has already won the Grand Prix for best film at the Ghent Film Festival, the Silver Lion in Venice and is being submitted for the Oscars on behalf of France. In the Netherlands, the film has been selected for IFFR.