Oscars 2023: Alice Diop’s film “Saint-Omer” will represent France

This feature film won the Grand Jury Prize and the prize for best first film at the Venice Film Festival 2022 on September 10. It will be released in theaters on November 23 in France and will be in the running in the “international feature film” category. Article written by Published on 09/23/2022 19:57 Updated on 09/23/2022 20:26 Reading time: 1 min. Thirteen days after being awarded at the Venice Film Festival, Alice Diop’s film, Saint-Omer, was selected on Friday September 23 to represent France at the next Oscars ceremony. Inspired by a true story of a trial for infanticide, Saint-Omer seeks to explore “the great universal question” of our “relationship to motherhood”, affirmed the director during the Mostra. His film tells the story of Laurence Coly, played by Guslagie Malanda, a Senegalese immigrant accused of having killed her 15-month-old baby by abandoning her on a northern beach at rising tide. The film, centered on the trial, is directly inspired by a news item from 2013 and the trial that followed. This is the first fiction of the 43-year-old director, until then specializing in documentaries, including the remarkable We (2021), which took the viewer to meet a territory – that crossed by the RER B – and of its inhabitants. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the prize for the first film in Venice, Saint-Omer is “a powerful film, emblematic of the revival of French cinema which we are proud to have accompanied in particular by the advance on receipts”, said congratulated the boss of the CNC, Dominique Boutonnat, quoted in the press release. It will be released in theaters on November 23. Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share by email Share link