After years of concatenating documentaries worthy of her initial training in sociology, Alice Diop moves on to her first fiction with Saint-Omer. Et l’exercice semble plutôt réussi puisque la cinéaste a remporté, le 10 septembre 2022, le grand prix du jury (Lion d’argent) et le prix du premier film (Lion du futur), lors de la 79e édition de la Mostra de Venice.
Alice Diop wins the Silver Lion and the Lion of the Future for Saint Omer
The director said in her acceptance speech:
“I don’t have the words. I no longer have words while while I was shooting Saint Omer there was a book that was my book on the bedside table, which I read every night and which gave me strength: it is Outsider sister by the poet Audre Lorde. You write about black women: “Our silence will not protect us”. So I want to say tonight that we won’t be silent anymore. “
Following Towards tenderness (winner in the best short film category at César 2017), e We (award for best film in the Encounters section at the Berlinale 2021), Alice Diop then takes a leap towards fiction. But he is still inspired by real facts: Berck’s famous infanticide.
Saint Omer by Alice Diop: a fiction based on a real infanticide
Adélaïde was 15 months old when she was found drowned on a beach in this French town located in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region. This is her mother, Fabienne Kabou, who abandoned her with the rising tide on November 19, 2013. In 2017 she was sentenced to fifteen years in prisonconsidering the alteration of discernment as an attenuating circumstance, as reported by art Publication at the time of the sentence.
It is this drama and its proof that Alice Diop recounts now Saint-Omer. More than news, it is the very relationship of society with motherhood that the director engraves, dissects and questions. This is what seduced the jury of the Venice Film Festival 2022. And perhaps France soon, when this cinematic tragedy, intimate and political, will be released on November 23, 2022.
Sant’Omerdirected by Alice Diop, it will be released in French cinemas on November 23, 2022.
Front page photo credit: YouTube screenshot.
Source: Madmoizelle
Ashley Root is an author and celebrity journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a keen eye for all things celebrity, Ashley is always up-to-date on the latest gossip and trends in the world of entertainment.
