SAINT OMER Discovery

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Alice Diop.

It’s a haunting scenario that keeps her awake at night: a young woman gently laying down her 15-month-old daughter upon the shoreline and allowing the sea to claim her. For novelist Rama, the very thought is shattering, both as a newly expectant parent and as a faint echo of a long-fractured relationship with her own mother. Yet as Rama attends the widely publicized infanticide trial of Senegalese immigrant Laurence Coly, a brilliant young woman hopelessly caught between a native culture that sees her as a turncoat and an unwelcoming France, Rama finds her own life uncannily mirroring that of the accused, sending the writer into uncharted emotional terrain and hurtling toward a breaking point in this searing and unforgettable first narrative feature from acclaimed documentarian Alice Diop, winner of both the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and the Lion of the Future Award at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival. –Cedar Sherbert