20TH edition NOVEMBER 24 TO DECEMBER 2, 2023
20th edition
November 24 to December 2, 2023
French screenwriter and director Alice Diop was born in 1979. After studying history and visual sociology at the Sorbonne, she began her career as a documentary f ilmmaker. Her short and medium-length films, which have been selected for and awarded prizes at numerous festivals, include Les Sénégalaises et la Sénégauloise (2007), La Mort de Danton (2011), La Permanence (2016) and Towards Tenderness (2016), which won the César Award for Best Short Film in 2017. Diopâs featurelength documentary We (2020) won the Encounters Award for Best Film in at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2021. Saint Omer is her feature-length fiction f ilm debut.
At the Saint Omer court of law, Rama, a young novelist, attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her fifteen-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. As the trial progresses, the statements of the accused and the testimony of witnesses shake Ramaâs convictionsâand call our judgement into question.
Director : Alice Diop
Producer : Toufik Ayadi, Christophe Barral
Screenwriter : Alice Diop, Amrita David, Marie Ndiaye
Cinematographer : Claire Mathon
Production Designer : Anna Le MouelÂ
Editor : Amrita David
Sound : Dana Farzanehpour, Josefina Rodrigues, Lucile Demarquet, Emmanuel Croset
Production Company : Srab Films
International Sales : Wild Bunch
Distributor : Teleview