Film Screening, with director Q&A

Saint Omer is an emotionally complex courtroom drama: Rama, a literature professor and novelist, travels north from Paris to Saint-Omer to observe the trial of Senegalese immigrant Laurence Coly, who is accused of leaving her 15-month-old daughter on a beach to be swept away by the tide. Writer-director Alice Diop’s first narrative feature interweaves “complex themes of mother-daughter bonds, immigrant alienation, and postcolonial trauma into a piercing portrait of two mysteriously connected women” (Criterion). Winner of multiple awards and nominations, including the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival (French, with English subtitles; 118 minutes).

This special screening in the Cinécritures: Women in Film series will be followed by a Q&A with Alice Diop, in conversation with Yasmina Price, Ph.D. candidate in African American Studies and Film and Media Studies, Claire Demoulin, and Oksana Chefranova, associate research scholars in Film and Media Studies.

Co-sponsored by Film and Media Studies and Whitney Humanities Center