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Special Features: 2023 Oscar® Selection, France
Award-winning documentarian Alice Diop (WE) makes a remarkable narrative debut with this tense psychological portrait, which combines the constructs of courtroom drama and true crime with a layered examination of motherhood, womanhood and race in postcolonial France. Based on a 2013 case of alleged infanticide, the film takes place within a courtroom in the small town of Saint Omer, where Rama (Kayije Kagame), an academic and novelist working on a contemporary retelling of the ancient Medea myth, observes the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda, MY FRIEND VICTORIA), a young Senegalese woman accused of abandoning her 15-month-old daughter to the tide on a beach in northern France. As the complex story of the accused woman is gradually revealed, Rama — pregnant with her first child — is forced to confront her own family history, her difficult relationship with her mother, who herself immigrated from Senegal as a young woman, and her fears about impending motherhood. With a script based largely on court transcripts, including a showstopping summation by the case's defense lawyer, Diop crafts a gripping, rigorous and reorienting account of an incomprehensible act that blurs the line between observer and subject to explore the limits of empathy and the double-edged sword of maternity. Winner, Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future for Best Debut Film and Edipo Re Award, 2022 Venice Film Festival. Official Selection, 2022 AFI FEST, Toronto, New York, Busan, London and Chicago film festivals. DIR/SCR Alice Diop; SCR Amrita David, Marie Ndiaye; PROD Toufik Ayadi, Christophe Barral. France, 2022, color, 122 min. In French with English subtitles. NOT RATED
No AFI Member passes accepted.
Run Time: 122 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, December 10, 2022
Genre: Crime drama