Saint Omer

A film by Alice Diop

Northern France, 2016. Rama, a successful Parisian journalist and author, has travelled to the coastal town of Saint-Omer to document the trial of Laurence Coly, 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…

Critics Reviews:

• “Diop resists the temptation to let Laurence off the hook altogether, to attribute her actions and motivations solely to mistreatment. To do so would be to deprive her of her humanity…” – Jennifer Wilson (The New Republic)

• “Alice Diop’s documen­tarian approach to the courtroom drama is fresh and urgent, consistently commanding attention to the women as they speak and listen.” – Lillian Crawford (Empire Magazine)

• ”“The film mounts its thesis while hardly needing to verbalise what’s going on: it mesmerises by reaching inside them to listen, even while others talk.” – Tim Robey (Daily Telegraph (UK))