#Alice Diop

[maggiecheungs]

“I dreamed of becoming a great philosopher. My ambition was cut short.”

SAINT OMER (2022) dir. Alice Diop

[cinematicmasterpiece]

saint omer (2022)

[sundaynightfilms]

Saint Omer, 2022

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

72. Saint Omer (2022)

[sesiondemadrugada]

Saint Omer (Alice Diop, 2022).

[filmap]

Saint Omer Alice Diop. 2022

Courthouse 3 Rue des Tribunaux, 62503 Saint-Omer, Francia See in map

See in imdb

[forhandsthatsuffer]

Saint Omer (2022), dir. Alice Diop

[theinsatiables]

AP: Why do you think you were compelled to go to the trial [of Fabienne Kabou, who one night in 2013 left her 15-month-old daughter on the beach to die]?

DIOP: I went to the trial because I had a very strong intuition. But for a very long time, I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to the trial and make a film about it.’ I think as a woman, as actually many other women around me, I was completely fascinated by this story. I really went as a woman. What struck me was a sentence that the defendant said to the police. When the inspector asked, ‘Why did you kill your daughter?’ she said, ‘I laid my daughter on the sand because I wanted the sea to take her away.’ For the French, it carries a very profound, psychoanalytic dimension because in French, the mother and the sea are the same word (mère and mer). In my head, I had the fantasy that she offered her daughter to a mother that was more powerful than she felt. It is this imagery of this mythological concept that became a magnet for me. But during the five days that I listened to this trial, I had no idea that it was going to draw me to the deepest, darkest place of my being.

AP: Having a child myself viscerally changed how I processed movies and stories about children in distress. Did you have an experience like that too, as a mother thinking about a story like this?

DIOP: I can’t exactly say that. But it is true that my partner was very concerned by my obsession with this story. Even for me it was a complete mystery. I did not understand why me, as a Black woman, could be so fascinated by this story of a Black woman that had killed her child. That was incomprehensible to me. I’m going to tell you something very personal, which I never talk about. I actually had a very deep postpartum depression when my child was a baby. And I believe that this trial is what helped me heal out of that depression. I not only forgave myself, but I also forgave my mother. It’s as if this trial was helping me, killing all this trauma.

[doublebilled]

Saint Omer (2022) dir. Alice Diop

Death by Hanging (1968) dir. Nagisa Oshima

[moratoirenoir]

[maggiecheungs]

Members of the jury, this is the story of a phantom woman. Of a slow disappearance. A tragic descent into hell.

Guslagie Malanga as Laurence Coly in SAINT OMER (2022) dir. Alice Diop

[pentosesuga]

Saint-Omer (2022) Dir. Alice Diop

[redcarpet-streetstyle]

[01sentencereviews]

Saint Omer (2022, Alice Diop)

[oldfilmsflicker]

This week's Directed By Women Viewing Guide includes an Agnieszka Holland retrospective at Doc Films, two online retrospectives featuring the films of Kit Zauhar and Alice Diop, a sun-soaked Lina Wertmüller satire, a short Palestinian documentary, and a refreshing short film by Lynne Ramsay.

[filmap]

Saint Omer Alice Diop. 2022

Station Place du 8 Mai 1945, 62500 Saint-Omer, France See in map

See in imdb