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The 46th César Awards, France’s top film honors, have been handed out in Paris, with Dominik Moll’s crime thriller The Night of the 12th winning the best picture trophy.

Moll’s The Night of the 12th, which premiered in Cannes last year, scored 10 César noms coming into the awards show, just behind Louis Garrel’s The Innocent, which picked up 11 nominations. Moll also won for best director, and Bouli Lanners earned the best supporting actor trophy for his performance in The Night of the 12th.

Cédric Klapisch’s Rise, about a ballet dancer (Marion Barbeau) who, after an injury, seeks a new future in contemporary dance, was up for 9 Césars, as was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, a thriller featuring Benoît Magimel as a morally-challenged Haut-Commissaire on an island in French Polynesia.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s dramedy Forever Young, Cedric Jimenez’s terrorism drama November, Eric Gravel’s family...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “Saint Omer,” the French film narrative debut of documentary maker Alice Diop, based on a real trial that she had observed. Currently in select theaters, see local listings.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Centered on a murder trial that focuses on Rama (Kayiije Kagame), a literature professor who wants to write about Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), who is about to be judged in court for drowning her toddler daughter in the ocean. As the trial proceeds, Rama increases her own anxiety about being newly pregnant and the relationship with her mother … Laurence and Rama are both in France through roots in African Senegal, and that circumstance unite the two characters together.

”Saint Omer” is currently in select theaters. See local listings. Featuring Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit and Xavier Maly. Screenplay by Alice Diop, Amrita David and Marie N’Diaye. Directed by Alice Diop.

’Rise’ and ’Pacifiction’ are also strong contenders.

Louis Garrel’s crime-infused romantic comedy The Innocent and Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th are the frontrunners for France’s 48th annual Cesar Awards with 11 and 10 nominations respectively.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Cédric Klapisch’s dance drama Rise and Albert Serra’s political thriller Pacifiction follow with nine nominations each.

The titles are all selected in the best film category alongside Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s Forever Young.

Despite a strong showing from French female directors at both the box office and festivals, the best director category is all-male this year.

Dominik Moll’s The Night of The 12th has won best film at the 28th edition of France’s Lumière Awards in Paris on Monday evening.

The investigative drama, which was nominated in six categories, also won Best Screenplay.

The film, which debuted in the Cannes Film Festival’s non-competitive Cannes Première section, stars Bastien Bouillon as a police detective who becomes obsessed with a case involving a complex female murder victim.

Best director went to Albert Serra for French Polynesia-set drama Pacification. The feature also clinched two other prizes: Best Actor for Benoît Magimal and Best Cinematography for Artur Tort.

Virginie Efira won Best Actress for her performance in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children about the challenge of navigating the stepmother role.

Nadia Tereszkiewicz won Best Female Revelation for her performance in Forever Young and Dimitri Doré, Best Male Revelation for Bruno Reidal.

Alice Diop clinched best documentary category for We,...

Parallel Mothers: Diop Explores Monstrousness and Motherhood in Provocative Courtroom Drama

For her narrative feature debut Saint Omer, Alice Diop builds an agonizing and elegant duality around the salvation of a Medea, evoking the timeless antagonist of Euripedes’ Greek tragedy, where motherhood and monstrosity are inextricably, eternally linked. At its core, this is a stunning fly-on-the-wall melodrama filled with extended sequences of French courtroom deliberation as a Senegalese woman stands trial for the murder of her fifteen-month old daughter, but complex layers and an outsider’s perspective enhances a universal scope on the psychological warfare motherhood employs.

A formidably complex script from Diop, with the assistance of her editor Amrita David and Marie N’Diaye is fleshed out by a handful of equally astute performances peeling away the inherent theatricality of the courtroom melodrama to present an exercise in raw, human emotion.…...

Alice Diop’s French drama Saint Omer opens in theaters today, and I remember the emotions I felt when I saw the film at Venice last year. It was a very personal experience for me — as if someone was telling my story on screen. At the beginning of my eventual interview with Diop, I asked where she sees herself within the French film industry. She made it clear she has stopped contemplating how she fits in. “It’s a question that I’m asked a lot, but I no longer ask myself where I fit in with French cinema,” she said. Can’t blame her for thinking that way. Creators of color often are asked those questions — or about the state of inclusion in Hollywood and how they would improve it. Questions that their white counterparts frequently and unfairly avoid.

Written by Diop, Amrita David, and Marie N’Diaye, Saint Omer...

Shudder and IFC Midnight are launching microbudget Skinamarink on a not-so-micro 629 screens, giving the viral horror pic a major push after a well-received premiere back at Fantasia-fest that just kept snowballing with strong reviews and social media love.

“I was over the moon. For a horror filmmaker in Canada, [Fantasia] is like getting a Cannes screening,” says first-time filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball about the leadup to this weekend’s buzzy specialty opening. He shot the 15k feature at his parents’ home in Edmonton, Canada.

In it, two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. “I’d had a nightmare when I was little. I was in my parents’ house, my parents were missing, and there was a monster. And lots of people have shared this exact same dream,” Ball tells Deadline.

Guslagie Malanda in Saint Omer Image: Courtesy of Neon Saint Omer haunts from its first image. A woman holding a baby walks on the beach towards the sea while the loud waves overwhelm the soundtrack. In another place, another woman wakes up from a nightmare calling for her mother. In two precise scenes,...

This review originally ran September 7, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

“A woman who has killed her baby can’t really expect any sympathy,” says Laurence Coly, who is accused of that very crime, in celebrated documentarian Alice Diop’s narrative debut “Saint Omer,” making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. So, the logical question is: Why would anyone watch such a film? Fortunately, Diop gives us many reasons.

Diop — whose 2021 documentary “We” (“Nous”), revolving around Black immigrant communities in the Paris suburbs, won top honors at the Berlin International Film Festival — doesn’t abandon her nonfiction roots. Truth also fuels her feature film. In it, well-spoken, educated Senegalese immigrant Laurence Coly, like the real Fabienne Kabou only a few years back, stands trial in quaint Saint-Omer in northeastern France for killing her 15-month-old daughter.

There to capture it all is pregnant...

There’s a lot of talk about how 2022 was a ‘flop’ year for film. The quality of the movies was constantly called into question without considering that many of these films were shot during the height of the pandemic where money, space, and resources were limited. Regardless of what anyone thinks, this year produced some phenomenal cinema, with even better performances. My best of 2022 list is meant to highlight some of the titles that left an impression on me. The choices range across genres from action, drama, documentary, and animation.

What are your top ten films of the year? Did you struggle finding movies to fill slots? Let me know in the comments!

Eo

Give these Donkeys an Academy Award today! I have never seen live-action animals perform with more personality, and emotion than the ones in Eo. With his own take on Au Hasard Balthazar, director Jerzy Skolimowski follows...

’Saint Omer’, ‘Other People’s Children’ and ’Pacifiction’ also receive multiple nods.

Dominik Moll’s police procedural The Night Of The 12th tops the nominations for the 28th annual Lumière Awards.

France’s version of The Golden Globes, the Lumière Awards are voted on by international correspondents from 36 countries.

The Night Of The 12th leads with six nominations, just ahead of Albert Serra’s political thriller Pacifiction with five. Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children and Alice Diop’s Saint Omer tie on four nods each. The films will vie for the Best Film prize alongside Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories.

Dominik Moll’s The Night of The 12th, which world premiered in Cannes in May, has topped the nominations for the 28th edition of France’s Lumière Awards.

The awards are voted on by members of the international press corp hailing from 36 countries based in France.

The Night Of The 12th was nominated in six categories including best film, director and screenplay. The film debuted in the Cannes Film Festival’s non competitive Cannes Première section.

The investigative drama is Moll’s seventh feature. It stars Bastien Bouillon, with support from Bouli Lanners, as a police detective who becomes obsessed with a case involving a complex female murder victim.

Other multi-nominated titles include Albert Serra’s French Polynesia-set drama Pacification five nominations.

Four films received four nominations each: Alice Diop’s Saint-Omer; Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children; Louis Garrel’s The Innocent and Gaspar Noé’s Vortex.

Diop,...

Saint Omer Trailer — Alice Diop‘s Saint Omer (2022) movie trailer has been released by Super Ltd. The Saint Omer trailer stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit, and Xavier Maly. Crew Amrita David, Alice Diop, and Marie Ndiaye wrote the screenplay for Saint Omer. Plot Synopsis Saint Omer‘s plot synopsis: “Saint Omer court of law. [...]

Continue reading: Saint Omer (2022) Movie Trailer: A Murder Case Shakes a Young Novelist’s Convictions in Alice Diop’s Film...

Georgia Oakley’s ‘Blue Jean’ won the audience award.

French cinema is this year the true winner at Seville European Film Festival (Seff), as France’s production companies are involved in the production of the eight main prizes at the Seville’s event which wrapped on Saturday.

Alice Diop’s first fiction feature Saint Omer adds Seville’s best feature award, the Golden Giraldillo to its brilliant career kicking off at Venice where it took the Silver Lion award.

The film has also been nomimated for France’s prestigiousLouis Delluc prize in both best feature and best debut categories and...

Chicago – The 58th Chicago International Film Festival (Ciff) announced its award winners on October 21st, 2022, and the recipient of The Gold Hugo in the International Feature Film Competition – the festival’s top honor – is Hiynu Pålmason’s ‘Godland”, a multi-layered critique of colonialist destruction.

Picking up the Festival’s Silver Hugo in the International Feature Film competition is “Close” (directed by Lucas Dhant), which also receives the Gold Hugo-q in the OutLook competition. In the New Directors Competition, Charlotte Le Bon’s “Falcon Lake” takes the Gold Hugo and Ann Oren’s “Piaffe” takes the Silver Hugo. The complete list of honorees is below.

“The Chicago International Film Festival has a 58-year history of honoring the most exciting, most original talent, and this year’s winners reflect a diversity of storytelling and filmmaking in remarkable and timely ways,” said Chicago International Film Festival Artistic Director Mimi Plauché. “With visual languages bold and subtle,...

Click here to read the full article.

Neon’s boutique label Super has acquired the U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s Saint Omer after a bow at Venice.

The film picked up the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, played in Toronto and is headed to a U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival. Super plans to release the film theatrically.

Diop co-wrote her debut fiction feature alongside Amrita David and Marie Ndiaye. Saint Omer stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville and Aurélia Petit.

The courtroom drama allowed Diop to make her first narrative feature with Saint Omer. The film follows Rama (Kagame), a pregnant young novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Malanda), a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her 15-month-old baby by leaving her on a beach to be swept away by the tide.

Rama arrives in the northern French town of Saint Omer,...

Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” has scored U.S. distribution with Neon’s boutique label Super after making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won two major competition awards.

Super will release the film in theaters, following its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival and screening at the BFI London Film Festival, both in October. “Saint Omer” won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future Award for Best Debut Feature at Venice; it also played at TIFF earlier this month, making it one of only four films to compete at NYFF, TIFF and Venice.

“Saint Omer” is the first narrative feature from Diop, the documentary filmmaker of “We,” “La Permanence” and “La Mort de Danton.” Inspired by a true story, the film revolves around the trial of Laurence Coly, a Senagalese woman accused of killing...

Neon’s boutique label Super has secured U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s acclaimed drama Saint Omer, following its world premiere earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival, where the film won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, as well as the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future Award for Best Debut Feature.

Inspired by a true story, Saint Omer is billed as a contemporary version of the Medea myth. The film follows the novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) as she attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. As the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgment.

One of just four films selected to competition this year at the Venice,...

US premiere set for New York Film Festival.

Neon’s boutique label Super has acquired US rights to Alice Diop’s Venice Silver Lion winner and Toronto selection Saint Omer, one of five films shortlisted for France’s international feature film Oscar submission.

‘Saint Omer’: Venice Review

Diop’s fiction feature debut is inspired by a true story and plays on the Medea mythology about the mother who kills her child. It follows Rama, a young novellist researching her next book, who reflects on her relationship with her mother as she attends the trial of a woman accused of infanticide.

Super, the boutique distribution label from Neon, has acquired U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” after it won the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize in Venice along with the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future award.

“Saint Omer” was recently shortlisted for France’s submission to the Academy Awards and will premiere at the New York Film Festival and play the BFI London Festival. Neon plans a theatrical release.

“Saint Omer” is Diop’s debut fiction feature, which she co-wrote with Amrita David and Marie NDiaye, and it stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville and Aurélia Petit. Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral of Srab Films produced alongside Arte France Cinéma and Pictanovo Hauts-de-France.

Inspired by a true story, “Saint Omer” revolves around Rama, a young novelist who attends the trial of a women who is accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her on a beach.

Click here to read the full article.

[The following story contains spoilers from Saint Omer.]

Acclaimed French documentarian Alice Diop makes a strong transition to the narrative feature with Saint Omer, her first fictional film, premiering this week in the Venice Film Festival’s main competition.

The film follows Rama (Kayije Kagame), a pregnant young novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her 15-month-old baby by leaving her on a beach to be swept away by the tide. Rama arrives in the northern French town of Saint Omer, where the trial will be held, with the intention of turning the tragic event into a literary retelling of Medea, but as she learns more about Coly’s life, she becomes increasingly anxious about her own memories and pregnancy.

Like her protagonist, Diop, also the daughter of Senegalese immigrants, traveled to attend a real-life trial of a Senegalese woman charged in...

Loneliness, postpartum-depression, motherhood, and isolation are at the core of Alice Diop’s feature film premiering at Venice, Saint Omer. Written by Diop and Marie N’Diaye, the movie stars Kayije Kagame and Guslagie Malanga. The film sends a message about the pressures of being a single parent and how women connect through trauma.

Rama (Kagame) is a journalist and professor who is writing a book loosely based on the myth of Euripides’ play Medea. Rama has a poor relationship with her mother, which is shown in flashbacks. Her mother often yelled or ignored her. Other times, Rama is watching her mother quietly sob without explaining why she’s upset. These painful memories affect Rama as she’s pregnant and wonders if she’ll behave similarly when her child is born. As an adult she seeks understanding into her mother’s psyche–that is until she travels to Saint Omer to cover the case of Laurence,...

In 2016, in the courtroom of Saint-Omer, a small, untouristed town off a D-road between Calais and Lille, the trial took place of a young Senegalese Frenchwoman accused of murdering her baby: an act so utterly antithetical to accepted ideas of motherhood and womanhood that it is inescapably considered the “worst of all possible crimes.” The woman, a PhD student with a reported genius Iq and a flair for flamboyantly intellectual French, confessed but claimed sorcery as the real culprit. It’s the kind of true story that presents an obvious opportunity for a sensitive social drama given to sober, sorrowfully objective observations about the perilous, tumbling vortex of class, gender, ethnic and cultural issues in which it plays out. “Saint Omer,” the deceptively austere, extraordinarily multifaceted fiction debut from documentarian Alice Diop, is not that film.

Instead, positioned on a mesmerizingly steady axis stretching, as though along a fascinated gaze,...

Click here to read the full article.

The details of the case are grim. On a chilly November day in 2013, Fabienne Kanou surrendered her 15-month-old daughter, Adélaïde, to the sea. She chose the shores of Berck-sur-Mer because of its linguistic proximity to impurity: “Berck” sounded like “Beurk,” the French word for “yuck.”

Later, when asked by police for her motive, Kanou replied cryptically, “It was simpler that way.” During her trial in 2016, she attributed her actions to malevolent forces. Nothing in her story made sense, she said. “Even a stupid person would not do what I did.”

Kanou’s case enraptured France for its peculiarity and harshness. The woman was a graduate student with a genius level Iq. White media outlets chronicling the trial liked to note her eloquence; they could not, it seems, reconcile Kanou’s race and rhetorical prowess, her calm presentation and horrifying action. Alice Diop’s...

Exclusive: Award-winning Senegalese filmmaker Alice Diop (Saint Omer) has signed with CAA for representation.

Best known for her work in the documentary space, Diop makes her narrative debut with Saint Omer, which will premiere in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, subsequently going on to make its North American premiere in Toronto. The film, which Diop directed from her script written with Marie N’Diaye, follows Rama (Kayije Kagame), a novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly at the Saint-Omer Criminal Court. The author intends to use Coly’s story to write a modern-day adaptation of the ancient myth of Medea, but things don’t go as expected. Wild Bunch International is handling international sales, with CAA Media Finance representing the film’s North American rights.

Diop has often used her work as a means of exploring the relationship between society and cinema in contemporary France. The filmmaker...

The winner will be revealed at a virtual awards ceremony on October 16.

Saint Omer, Corsage and Nezouh are among the eight titles screening as part of the official competition at the 66th BFI London Film Festival.

Thirteen countries are represented across this year’s selection. The winner is to be chosen by a jury and revealed at a virtual awards presentation on October 16.

The jury members will be announced in the coming weeks.

Scroll down for the Lff official competition line-up

Saint Omer is the fiction debut from French director Alice Diop, and is to world premiere at Venice. It is set in a courtroom,...

Wild Bunch International has unveiled a first clip of Alice Diop’s anticipated sophomore outing “Saint Omer” ahead of the film’s world premiere at Venice in competition. The film has also been selected at Toronto Film Festival.

“Saint Omer” tells the journey of a young novelist, Rama, who attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. As the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgement.

Diop penned the script with Amrita David and Marie Ndiaye, a celebrated French novelist who won the Goncourt prize with “Trois femmes puissantes.” Guslagie Malanga (“Mon Amie Victoria”) headlines the film.

“Saint Omer” is produced by Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral at Srab Films, the banner behind Ladj Ly’s Oscar nominated “Les Miserables.

Saint-Omer

A documentary filmmaker for about a decade now, the Senegalese French born Alice Diop has set her sights now on fiction having contributed to episodes of H24, 24 h de la vie d’une femme right after seeing her last feature doc We break into prestige fests such as Berlin, New Directors/New Films, Karlovy Vary and BFI London Film Festival. Also worth the mention, just prior to that, Vers La tendresse winning the César for best short. Saint-Omer went into production in the beginning in May of 2021, and is written by Diop and Marie N’Diaye of (White Material) fame and produced by Les Misérables producers Christophe Barral and Toufik Ayadi.…...

It seems strange that it's taken this long for Claire Denis and Isabelle Huppert to work together on a film, but whatever the reason, it was worth the wait. Denis's "White Material," featuring the legendary actress as a white African farmer who insists on staying in her home even though her war-torn country is descending into madness and bloodshed, offers the director yet another opportunity to display her beguiling style, with its patented mix of intense physicality and ethereal stylization. And who better than the amazing Huppert, the thinking man's goddess of the arthouse corporeal, to help bring this vision to fruition? It's a performance that relies more on movement and gesture than it does on dialogue and story. Huppert brings an intangible humanity to this character - despite the film's elliptical style, we're riveted by this woman's onscreen ordeal. The result is one of the actress's greatest parts - saying quite a bit,...