Saint Omer
60th New York Film Festival
September 30 - October 16, 2022
Successful journalist and author Rama (Kayije Kagame) attends the trial of a young Senegalese woman (Guslagie Malanda), who has allegedly murdered her own baby daughter. Rama’s plan to write about Laurence in a book inspired by the Medea myth increasingly unravels as she becomes overwhelmed by the case in Alice Diop’s arresting yet highly sensitive, superbly acted fiction feature debut.
Ends Thursday, Feb. 23!
Oscar Shortlisted for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards
Venice Film Festival Winner – Silver Lion, Best Debut Film
Prix Jean Vigo Winner
Best International Film Nominee – Film Independent Spirit Awards and Gotham Awards
Top 10 Film of 2022 – Film Comment, Sight and Sound, Richard Brody, Dana Stevens, Vulture, Variety
Rama (Kayije Kagame), a successful journalist and author living in Paris, has come to Saint Omer, a town in the north of France, to attend the trial of a young Senegalese woman, Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), who allegedly murdered her baby daughter. Although she admits to killing the child, she cannot or will not provide motivation, claiming it was a kind of sorcery out of her control. Rama’s plan to write about Laurence in a book inspired by the Medea myth increasingly unravels as she becomes overwhelmed by the case and reckons with memories of her immigrant mother as well as her own impending motherhood. In her consummate fiction feature debut, Alice Diop (We) constructs an arresting yet highly sensitive, superbly acted film of constantly revealing layers. Saint Omer is at once a tense courtroom drama, a work of abstracted psychological portraiture, an inquiry into human agency, and a provocative examination of the limits of myth and cross-cultural knowledge. An NYFF60 Main Slate selection. A SUPER release.
Watch the NYFF60 Q&As below.
An intellectually charged, emotionally wrenching story.
—A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Exquisite...I can’t imagine seeing something more compositionally thought-through and artfully constructed in current cinema.
—Michael Koresky, Reverse Shot
Extraordinary...a supremely intelligent and haunting movie.
—Justing Chang, Lost Angeles Times
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