Saint Omer

Winning the Grand Jury prize at Venice Film Festival, acclaimed documentarian Alice Diop brings us one of the most highly anticipated films of the year.

This tense and shifting narrative depicts the gripping story of a young novelist who is forced to confront her own complex family history as she attends a notorious murder trial. Inspired by true events, Diop guides us through the trial of a young Senegalese-French woman accused of abandoning her infant child on a beach at high tide. The trial unravels rich historical knots that are at play – more complex than at first glance.
A piercingly brilliant film that invites profound inquiry into myth, race, gender, culture and the hierarchies of power. Saint Omer is a must-see.

Awards

WINNER: 2022 Venice International Film Festival – Grand Jury Prize
WINNER: 2022 Prix Jean Vigo
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2023 Academy Awards, Best International Feature (France)

About the Director

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 filmmaker. Her short and medium-length films have been selected and awarded prizes in several festivals including Les Sénégalaises et la Sénégauloise (2007), La Mort de Danton (2011), La Permanence (2016) and Towards Tenderness (2016), which won 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.