Saint Omer

Brief looks: sometimes clear and direct, like the lawyer, who speaks into the camera in her summing up words: “we are all monsters”; sometimes from the corner of the eye, furtive and mysterious even when smiling – like Laurence Coly, who is in court accused of having killed her young daughter. Her look is directed towards Rama, a young writer and lecturer from Paris who is following the trial, but it also meets the audience: unprepared and unfathomable. The complexity of the protagonist and the motives behind her actions can be see here in miniature, which the ongoing court proceedings with their questions and witness statements are not entirely able to resolve. Instead, Alice Diop’s fiction debut paints “a complex, ambiguous picture in which family trauma, racism and the struggle with motherhood play a role.” (Birgit Kohler) (mg)