France has selected ‘Saint-Omer’ to compete for Best International Film at this year’s Oscars, having just won the Jury Prize and Best First Film at the Venice International Film Festival.
Directed by Alice Diop, the film is based on a real-life incident: a horrific case of “mother murdering her own daughter”, written by Diop and Marie NDiaye, an African-American writer who won the French Le Prix Goncourt.
The film follows Laurence Coly, a young Senegalese immigrant college student who is tried in court in the small town of Saint-Omer: she is accused of murder for leaving her 15-month-old baby girl on a high tide beach, where she drowned.
The young mother, who has a PhD and a reported IQ of 150, acted in such an unconscionable manner that the case received a great deal of attention from French society and the media when the trial opened in France in 2016.
The media reported the case as a social event and, in addition to being amazed that black immigrants could speak French fluently and elegantly and making a big deal out of it, attributed the case to the madness of being under the spell of African witchcraft.
Related Post: ‘Saint-Omer’ Review: A rare African film exploring mother-daughter relationships.
