Bringing a documentarian’s sense of open-ended inquiry to her first narrative feature, writer-director Alice Diop constructs a morally and emotionally layered courtroom drama unlike any other. When she travels to Saint-Omer, France, to attend the trial of a young Senegalese woman (Guslagie Malanda) accused of murdering her infant daughter, novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) finds herself shaken to the core by a case that proves to have profound resonances with her own life. Interweaving complex themes of mother-daughter bonds, immigrant alienation, and postcolonial trauma into a piercing portrait of two mysteriously connected women, Diop forgoes mere questions of guilt and innocence in order to plumb the unsettling unknowability of the human soul.
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Supplements
- New interviews with director Alice Diop
- Conversation between Alice Diop and author Hélène Frappat
- Conversation between Alice Diop and filmmaker Dee Rees from a 2023 episode of The Director’s Cut – A DGA Podcast
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Jennifer Padjemi